By Michael Hasch
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
PITTSBURGH — Six teenage girls and young women were injured when a long-running dispute erupted into a brawl Wednesday in the Mexican War Streets area of the North Side.
City police Sgt. David Krueger said five others were arrested on charges of assault, failure to disperse and disorderly conduct for the fighting that erupted at 4:20 p.m. near the intersection of Monterey and Jacksonia streets.
City paramedics took four people to hospitals for minor stab or slashing wounds. A fifth victim, who was among those arrested, was treated at the scene for a cut to the hand. A sixth said she would go to the hospital on her own for treatment of a head injury, paramedics said.
Police and relatives of some of the victims said the brawl involved several high school girls who were involved in a fight earlier in the day along Allegheny Commons off East North Avenue.
Cetesha Brookins, 27, of the North Side, said two dozen or three dozen girls, accompanied by mothers and grandmothers, attacked two of her sisters and their companions because of a dispute that apparently started over a boy.
“They followed them up here and jumped them,” Brookins said.
She said that her sisters were sprayed with pepper spray and their companions were among those treated by paramedics.
“This is all about nothing. It’s very senseless,” Brookins said. “Life is too short.”
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