Four more charged in Butler fight at Rotary Park
Four more people are facing charges in connection with an Oct. 22 fight that drew a large crowd and numerous police officers to Rotary Park in Butler.
Butler police filed various charges Monday against Richard J. Ealy, 33; Dontae M. Miller, 18; Deryious D. McCurty, 26; and Tyler A. Albright, 32, all of Butler.
Ealy and Miller were charged with simple assault and disorderly conduct; McCurty was charged with obstructing police and disorderly conduct; and Albright was charged with theft from a motor vehicle.
Those charges were filed after police charged Kayden A. Vaughn, 19, of Butler, with terroristic threats, recklessly endangering another person, simple assault and disorderly conduct. He was arraigned Oct. 23 and released after posting $30,000 bond.
Butler police responded to the park after someone called 911 and reported seeing a man with a knife and a man with a gun. A group of about 25 people who were there scattered and ran when police arrived.
According to an affidavit, police detained Miller after people at the scene pointed him out to officers. While officers were placing Miller in a patrol vehicle, another man ran up to an officer and handed him a folding knife and said he just disarmed a man identified as Vaughn who was swinging the knife around and trying to stab people, according to an affidavit.
The man who disarmed Vaughn told police that he is a legal gun owner and used his gun to force Vaughn to drop his knife, according to the affidavit. Police said that man had the gun in a holster on his hip. Police took him into custody and seized his gun.
Vaughn was detained, but the crowd at the park was becoming agitated because police were placing people in patrol cars and the crowd was growing, so additional police were summoned.
As more police arrived, an officer was told that Ealy was a main aggressor of the fight involving the knife and gun, police said. As Ealy was being detained, McCurty was yelling at police and getting the crowd “amped up,” according to the affidavit.
McCurty was told to stop that behavior and to stop getting in the face of responding officers, police said. After briefly stopping, he aggressively approached an officer causing the officer to give McCurty a verbal warning and push him back. He was then detained, according to the affidavit.
A witness told police Vaughn got out of his vehicle and swung a folding knife at people on the sidewalk before the man with the gun used the weapon to get Vaughn to drop the knife. The witness also said disarming Vaughn triggered a second fight in which people dispersed when police arrived, police said.
It was determined that the fight was over a woman that Vaughn and Miller were involved with, according to the affidavit.
After the crowd dispersed, police said they took the five people they had in custody to the station for formal interviews, and their statements matched video footage of the incident, police said.
In the end, police said they determined Vaughn got into a verbal dispute with multiple people on the sidewalk, got out of his vehicle while it was on the street and began swinging the knife at two of the detained men, including the one who was involved with the same woman as Vaughn was.
As the crowd grew in size, the man who disarmed Vaughn tried to break up the fight. Police said that’s when he noticed Vaughn had a knife and approached Vaughn with the gun pointed at him before Vaughn dropped the knife, according to the affidavit.
After Vaughn dropped the knife, two of the men who were later detained, attacked Vaughn and began punching him while he was down. Police said one man held Vaughn down by the neck and the other man threw several punches toward Vaughn’s kidney area.
Police said charges were filed against McCurty because he attempted to prevent officers from handcuffing three of the four people involved in the fight. Police said he was detained after being told once and then yelled at to step back during the handcuffing.
Albright was charged for allegedly stealing the keys of the car in which Vaughn arrived at the scene. He exited the car after parking it on South Chestnut Street. Police said video surveillance showed Albright removing the keys and then dropping them after Vaughn begins chasing him.
Vaughn then reengages with the group he was fighting with, and Albright finds the keys, picks them up, puts them in his pocket and walks out of the view of the camera, according to the affidavit.