Temecula Students Hurt In 'Very Physical, Disturbing' Fight

TEMECULA, CA — A massive lunchtime fight at a Temecula high school left multiple students hospitalized and shook the entire campus. The fight broke out at Great Oak High School and started with just two students who may have pre-planned the brawl, according to an email from Temecula Valley Unified School District officials.

Police tell Patch that five or six students ultimately are accused of participating in the fight, and three were hurt. Of those three, two were transported to the hospital with minor injuries, according to sheriff's Dep. Robyn Flores.

School officials say that in addition to the group fighting, hundreds of students soon made their way into the mess.

"Additional students began to get involved and within a matter of minutes, the number of participants grew into hundreds of students pushing and converging on the scene," the TVUSD emailed statement states.

Despite the intervention of the School Resource Officer and other campus supervisors "students involved in the incident did not respond to authorities and continued to fight," according to the statement.

As a result, students were ushered into their 5th period classrooms early.

"Today’s incident was very physical and disturbing for our entire campus," Great Oak High School Principal Aimee Ricken said in the statement. "I am extremely upset this occurred and that students and staff on our campus were in an unsafe environment. Many of our students escalated today’s incident because they prioritized the need to record the activity with their phones or physically pushed themselves to the front of the activity."

Ricken urged parents to talk to their children about the importance of listening to adults during these "times of crisis or incident command."

"Despite posts on social media to the contrary, no weapons were involved," she added.

Both police and school officials are investigating the case. As of Thursday afternoon, no arrests had been made in the case, according to Flores.