Updated: Four Arrested, 18 Suspended for Muir Fight

Updated Tuesday 3:30 p.m: School district officials announced Tuesday that 18 students were suspended for Friday's fight: five for fighting, two for throwing water balloons and the rest for other unspecified disruptive behavior.

In addition, the Pasadena Police Department has now arrested four students, according to the district's press release. The release also says that expulsion is a possbility for these students.

Lt. Phlunte Riddle of the Pasadena Police Department said the four students, all of whom are minors, were arrested on misdemeanor counts of battery.  Two were involved in the fights directly, two in fighting with police officers, police said.

She said that, though many more were involved in the fight, those four were singled out because officers felt their actions were more "egregious because they did not stop when they were told to so or caused an injury by continuing to fight."

Original: Police have set up a barricade on the streets outside John Muir High School Friday afternoon after several outbreaks of fighting around midday, according to Pasadena Police Department Lt. Phlunte Riddle.

Riddle described the violence as "fist fights" and said that there were no weapons involved, and that nobody has been arrested.

She said that the police presence probably made the scene look worse than it actually was.

"It looks a mess but no weapons were found there thankfully," Riddle said.

She said a fistfight originally broke out around noon.  A police officer school responded and separated the kids, but several additional fights broke out throughout the day.

Police are escorting students off the campus to make certain there is not any additional fighting, Riddle said.

She said she does not know what the fights were about at this time.

"I'm not sure if it was over a girl or something inappropriate that was said or what," Riddle said.

Update: By 3:45 p.m. police were lifting the barricade and most kids were off campus.

Jacques Bolton of the MPYD Mentors group, which meets at John Muir, was on campus during the fights and said they were not as huge a deal as the police response would indicate.

He said the original fight had about five people and started at lunch.  There were more scuffles throughout the day.

He said that he actually saw worse fights in the days after the in February.

Bolton said he believes the school's administration did a great job responding to the violence, but that the police response, which included deputies armed with rifles standing outside the school, was a little excessive. 

"Today was overkill," Bolton said.

Updated 5:15 p.m: Two students were transported to a local hospital on Friday at some point after the fight, according to a PUSD press release.

Updated 5:40 p.m: A Pasadena PD release describes the injuries of the two students who were transported to the hospital as "minor" and notes that the fighting was not racially motivated, describing it as "horseplay."