Czech Police charge five more suspects in poolside brawl that sparked radical demonstration
The Czech Police have charged five more people in association with a brawl at a swimming pool in the northern Bohemian town of Dubí at the beginning of August. The woman who was first charged immediately after the conflict remains under investigation as well.
“In association with the incident that happened on 7 August at the swimming pool in Dubí, the detective has issued a motion to begin the criminal prosecution of five men who are suspected of being accomplices to attempted felony battery, committing the offense of rioting, and two of the men are also charged with the offense of threatening to endanger others,” Daniel Vítek, press spokesperson for the Ústecký Regional Police, told news server Romea.cz. When asked whether one of those charged is the youth David M., whom eyewitnesses say assaulted a Romani woman who was scuffling at the pool with a non-Romani woman, Vítek did not respond.
If the case ends up in court and those charged are found guilty, they could face as much as 10 years in prison. The entire conflict began with an apparently banal incident between two children in a wading pool that sparked an argument between their mothers and then a brawl.
Men later also joined the fighting. “One Romani child – I believe unintentionally – began drowning a so-called white child. The mother of the white child jumped in, grabbed the child who was drowning her child, pushed that child away and picked her own child up,” a person calling himself Petr Štefanec posted to Facebook about the incident.
The Romani mother then began to defend her own child, according to Štefanec, and is said to have attacked the other mother. “That lady grabbed my child by the shoulder, began shaking him, yelled ‘I’ve had enough of you, you’re pissing me off’ and then tossed him into the wading pool like a piece of rag,” the Romani mother described the beginning of the dispute to Romea.cz.
The Romani mother than ran after her own child. “I asked her how she dared push my child around,” she told Romea.cz.
“The lady began to shout abuse at us. She threatened to ‘cunt-punt’ my friend… I grabbed my child, who was in shock, and went back to my blanket,” said the Romani mother – whom other media outlets later incorrectly reported had been charged in the matter.
According to the eyewitness Štefanec, a young man then ran onto the scene and attempted to aid the “white” woman. Other Romani people are then said to have joined the conflict.
Those Romani participants are said to have beaten that young man up. Another non-Romani eyewitness described the beginning of the incident as involving the “white” mother escalating the argument.
The brawl at the swimming pool later became a pretext for right-wing radicals to hold a demonstration in front of the local authority in Dubí that also involved rioting. Police are prosecuting eight people involved in that incident.
