The Montgomery Police Department has detained a woman in connection with the scuffle that occurred on the riverfront on Saturday, making her the fourth person to be charged in the investigation. On Thursday, Mary Todd, 21, handed herself in to authorities and was charged with third-degree assault, a misdemeanor.
Todd is reportedly being held in the Montgomery Municipal Jail, according to MPD. As the investigation is still ongoing, MPD has not released any additional information about Todd’s involvement in the fight. Allen Todd, 23, Zachary Shipman, 25, and Richard Roberts, 48, were all arrested in the preceding days, with Todd being the fourth.
There is one charge against each suspect for now, albeit Roberts is being counted twice. Police in Montgomery are still looking to speak with a guy they believe to be Reggie Gray. More charges are likely to be filed against him after it was revealed that he was the one shown on film using a folding chair to attack others.
The ywet below verifies the news:
A woman has been arrested in connection to the brawl at the Montgomery riverfront
Montgomery police are still asking a man identified as Reggie Gray to contact them for questioninghttps://t.co/V2TZb7ScLk
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) August 10, 2023
Police in Montgomery are looking through a number of citizen-submitted videos and footage from the city’s own surveillance cameras to piece together what happened. Anyone with more footage is encouraged to send it to Starcenter@montgomeryal.gov. MPD reported that the event unfolded on the Alabama River dock around 7 p.m. on Saturday.
Units were dispatched to the 200 block of Coosa Street in response to a report of a fight. When police arrived, they saw a huge gathering of persons involved in a fight. A viewer shot video of the confrontation and subsequent scuffle that they provided with WSFA 12 News; it runs around four minutes and thirty seconds.
Police Chief Darryl Albert of Montgomery, Alabama, addressed the media on Tuesday and stated the trouble started when private boat owners refused to move their vessel so that the city’s Harriot II Riverboat could dock there. The captain of the boat tried using the ship’s public address system for 45 minutes without success.
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According to the chief, the private boat owners did not cooperate by moving their vessel, but instead hurled obscenities at the Harriot. Later, the co-captain boarded a smaller vessel and approached the pier in an effort to persuade the boat’s owners to leave. This initiated the physical altercation.
According to court documents obtained by CNN, a witness testified that racial slurs were exchanged before the fight broke out. As the co-captain attempted to withdraw the pontoon boat from the Harriott II’s docking place, the witness apparently made a sworn statement to law police stating as much.
Who exactly made the slurs remains unknown. While the MPD did contact with state and federal partners, those agencies concluded there was not enough evidence to label the incident a hate crime, and Commissioner Albert had previously stated that the department did not believe race had a role in the altercation. The police chief said on Tuesday that the charges could be upgraded from misdemeanors in the future.
“At the time, we did not have the luxury of all the videos that we have seen now, that you and I have seen, and that the world has seen. Basically all we had were witness statements and he-said, she-said so our police officers and detectives had to decipher through all that and then apply the appropriate charges at that time,” Albert explained.
“So again, as we gain more information, as we get more video, as we talk to more individuals, if charges are meant to be amended, they will be.”
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