Agents of the National Police and the Municipal Police of Madrid arrested yesterday Monday at noon seven young North Africans, one of them a minor, who were involved in a mass brawl on Elisa Street in the Madrid district of Usera. The brawl, in which more people participated than were able to escape, began after two of those involved stole a mobile phone from a person in a center for the homeless located in Usera.

Those arrested are between 24 and 17 years of age and face the crimes of tumultuous brawl, trespassing, damages, injuries, resistance, attack against an officer of the authority and disobedience of an agent to the authority. Some are exmenas (unaccompanied migrant minors) who are now residing in reception centres.

Several neighbours alerted the police yesterday at around 13:00 p.m. when a group of about 15 young North Africans were hitting each other in the middle of Elisa Street. At least ten neighbours warned alarmed by the scale of the brawl in which bladed weapons and knives were brandished. When the agents arrived, many of them bloodied and with wounds on their faces and hands, they began to run away through the streets of Gumersindo Ázcarate and Doctor Sánchís Banús.

The National Police were quickly deployed in the area together with the Municipal Police and managed to arrest four of those involved in the adjacent streets. Another was arrested on the platform of line 6 of the Usera metro, on Mirasierra Street.

One of the prisoners elbowed one of the National Police officers when he resisted and another officer was slightly injured when he fell down the stairs of the Usera metro station when he was chasing one of those involved.

At the same time, Municipal Police officers arrested two other individuals who participated in the fight. Finally, the police managed to gather the seven detainees in the street of Amparo Usera where they confiscated several knives from sawed kitchens with rounded blades.

Two of the detainees were taken to the 12 de Octubre Hospital by the National Police officers due to their injuries. Another was treated by Samur doctors at the Usera police station.

Subsequent police investigations revealed that the fight began when two of those involved stole a mobile phone from a young Maghrebi man in an alternative accommodation for the homeless and that when they met they began to argue.

All of the detainees have police records for thefts and robberies of mobile phones. In fact, during the intervention, several terminals were recovered in the names of other people who could have been victims of a criminal act committed by one of those arrested.

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