A wild 10-person brawl in Sooke involving bats, pipes and brass knuckles sent four people to hospital and may lead to criminal charges for up to nine of them.
Sooke RCMP are still investigating the Friday dust-up, but confirm it erupted over a rental dispute between a tenant and landlord.
Cellphone video of the fight shows the heated dispute unfold in the front yard of a home on Ayre Road.
Seven men and three woman were involved in the brawl, which police say was sparked when a person showed up with others to try to convince an existing tenant to leave the property.
“It appears that the landlord from this house went there with some new tenants. There was an altercation, pepper-spray was used, numerous weapons came out,” said Sooke RCMP Staff-Sgt. Jeff McArthur. “Our investigators are still trying to determine exactly what happened, but we anticipate forwarding charges on nine of those involved with this.”
CTV News spoke with the current tenant, Brittany Dalley, who claimed she was forced out of her house by one man and then beaten.
“He just came barrelling in straight for me,” she said. “He was hitting me with a bar and pulling me out by the hair into the middle of the yard.”
When things started to get even more out of control in the yard, that’s when Dalley said she resorted to throwing a chair through a car windshield.
“I said ‘everybody stop frigging fighting, or I’m going to smash this chair through your vehicle,’ and they wouldn’t stop, so I smashed it through the vehicle and they did actually all stop,” she said.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dalley said she now plans to move out in light of Friday’s brawl.
The police showed up shortly after to sort out the incident.
Calls by CTV News to the home’s landlord went unanswered Tuesday.
It’s the latest instance of violent incidents in the Sooke area. Last month, a drive-by shooting led to a massive, five-day manhunt, and in April, a Molotov cocktail was tossed at a home in an apparent act of vigilante justice.
But the town’s acting mayor and police say the recent behaviour is out of the norm.
“I’ve been here my whole life and it’s very strange,” said Ebony Logins.
McArthur said the brawl is an isolated incident and denied any spike in violent crimes.
“This is just an anomaly, strange occurrence, and it’s not connected to any of those other cases in any way,” he said.
Everyone involved in the latest incident is now out of hospital.
Police say they’re recommending charges of assault causing bodily harm and assault with a prohibited weapon.
