Street brawl sparks response from city, neighbors

A wild street fight in Birmingham. Now leaders are working to figure out what to do next. Good evening, I'm Rup Raj. The brawl happening late last week. Neighbors and police want to come up with a plan to keep people safe. Fox 2's Dave Kinchin is live tonight in Birmingham with what is really a key witness and what that key witness has to say about all of this. Dave. Yeah, Rup, we were all over this story Monday night when City Council, really the City Commission here in Birmingham held their regular meeting and they took a bit of an earful from some residents and some members of the City Commission want to see more to be done on public safety on downtown Birmingham streets. This is the reason why we go to the video right now and the reason is of course it follows this brawl that took place near Bates Street last week and at least two groups breaking out into fisticuffs as people otherwise enjoyed what normally would have been a quiet night in the affluent social and business corridor. A key witness who filmed the main video that went viral says this was an isolated incident and obviously does not represent what Birmingham really is all about. Still, it's unclear what started this, but action is still wanted by many. As I was walking on the wall over there, it was a guy slapping a guy on the wall and then he threw him over the wall. Next thing I know, I mean, just like out of a movie, a guy comes out with no shirt on and I'm like, okay, he didn't, he had one in his hand either, but he has no shirt on. He looks highly upset and he comes out and then just like John Wick, the guys start coming out and they start pouring out and I'm like, oh man, it's about to go down and I'm like, nobody's going to believe this. So that's when I pulled out my camera and I started recording. Any idea what sparked this? What caused it? One of the guys involved, I asked him, he said he had no idea, but he was just throwing to protect his friends. He didn't even know what was going on either. So we're still waiting to hear from Birmingham police to find out more about what started this. If anybody was charged, we did see in that video, police breaking all of this up here in Birmingham. We spoke to a city commissioner Monday night who said in his words, Brad Host, the member of the commission, he wants his fellow commissioners to take what he called a field trip to downtown Birmingham, which wouldn't really be a far trip for many, of course, not a big city, but to take a field trip to the city streets on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday night and see how trouble can quickly arise sometimes here or there. But most people we talked to point out that this was an isolated thing and does not certainly represent what Birmingham really is all about. Reporting live in Birmingham, Dave Kinchen, Fox 2 News. Hey, any idea of the age of some of the participants in this fight? Well, they definitely seem a bit older. We're not talking about teenagers or anything like that. Just from the video, they seem to be in their twenties, maybe even in their thirties. I think that's what shocked a lot of people. It's one thing when you have the teen takeovers and younger people getting into mischief, but these seem to be people who are in their mid twenties, maybe early thirties too. Growing people who should know better, I guess. Dave Kinchen for us live tonight. Dave, thank you.