A wild brawl broke out among a group of swimsuit-clad boaters at a Florida lake over the weekend — in which one man was knocked unconscious and left floating face down in the water, shocking video shows.
The unruly fight happened at Lake Winterset in Polk County, in front of young children relaxing on the lakeside with their families, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said.
Seven men and a 17-year-old boy were arrested, Sheriff Grady Judd announced Tuesday, as he vowed to make an example out of the hooligans.
The dramatic footage starts when one of the men is slugged twice by another before he flops to the ground and appears to be unconscious. Once he went face down, the others started swinging.
Punches fly seemingly at random as a woman in a pink bikini attempts CPR on the knocked-out man, the clip played by the sheriff shows.
The chaos stilled for a moment as one of the taller men wearing a gigantic gold chain tried to hold back another man who thrashed wildly in his arms.
The two tripped over a ledge and into the lake before the man who threw the first punch dove in out of nowhere and started walloping another man, who was also knocked unconscious face down in the lake.
Mason Land, Nate Land, Payton Ely, Timothy Gooding, Richard Carden, Garrett Ore, Garrett Hiltabidel and an unidentified 17-year-old have since been arrested for the violence and all face charges for rioting, affray, trespassing and disorderly conduct, according to the sheriff’s office.
All of the men were in their late teens and early 20s, except for Carden, who is 40 years old.
The fed-up sheriff promised an unflinching crackdown on delinquency throughout the county, specifically on properties like the Winterset sandbar.
“You can knucklebust and create brain injuries to each other on your own property without creating a disturbance to your neighbors. It’s over, folks. I think I’ve said that enough,” Judd said.
“The conduct is reprehensible and, obviously, you don’t believe us when we try to warn you. So you have unleashed the teeth of the dog, and now we’re going to start biting you, just like we bit these guys here.”
Rabble-rousing young people tend to crop up near the Winterset sandbar for all types of criminality, including public displays of indecency and sexual activity captured by neighboring property owners, the sheriff said.
In May, the Polk County Commission passed an ordinance that would keep boaters away from the shoreline at specific lakes, including the sandbar on Lake Winterset. It has just reached the final stages of state approval by early August, Judd said, but it hasn’t gone into effect yet.
In the wake of the fight, Judd added that the sheriff’s office will be meeting with the county attorneys to explore imposing an extra noise ordinance at the lake.
Lake Winterset is just 2 miles away from LEGOLAND Florida, a theme park resort based on the popular children’s toy.
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