Police Disperse Crowd After Fight at Holiday Inn

Somerville Police dispersed a crowd of partygoers Thursday night after a fight at the Holiday Inn in East Somerville, according to Deputy Chief Paul Upton of the Somerville Police Department.

Upton said about 10 to 12 women got into a fight at a lounge in the hotel, and after police broke up the fight "we decided to disperse the crowd." The lounge was then shut down for the night.

Two women were arrested as a result of the fight, Upton said.

Upton said the incident was not a "massive" brawl involving 100 people, as some reports indicated. A Fox25 headline, for instance, said "More than 100 people involved in Somerville hotel melee."

"[It] was a large crowd but not a large fight," the deputy chief said of the incident.

"It wasn't like people were fighting everywhere," he said.

Upton said the crowd was slow to leave the lounge, and as a result Somerville police received "some additional support from a couple of Medford police units and state police units."

Fox25 reported that after the Holiday Inn incident, another fight broke out nearby at a Hess gas station in Charlestown—the Holiday Inn is right on the border of Charlestown. Shots were fired, according to the news station, and Somerville police did not know if the incidents were related.