Initial police investigations into a downtown Savannah street fight on Saturday night appear not to support allegations by two Forsyth County men that they and their families suffered an unprovoked attack and beating.
The victims themselves may not be much help, as their retelling of the fracas — on Facebook, then on an Atlanta TV station and then to the Savannah Morning News — has changed since the event occurred.
Detectives on Tuesday released video of the River Street altercation in hope of identifying other participants so they can be interviewed as part of the ongoing investigation.
Metro Atlanta man’s telling
In a WSB-TV story originally titled “Family brutally attacked Mother’s Day weekend” online, Jim Thomas and his brother-in-law, Rob Gray, tell a reporter how they were attacked by a “mob” that pushed one of them into the side of a car, grabbed Thomas’ wife by her hair and punched his 6-year-old daughter in her stomach.
Thomas says he and seven other members of his family were walking down River Street about 9:30-9:45 p.m. Saturday when someone walked through the group, leading to a confrontation and subsequent “melee.”
In a Facebook post that he asked others to “like” and share, the man from Cumming said his group was confronted by a hostile man near the Hyatt. Then, Thomas says, someone else rushed him from behind and into a parked car, which led to his face hitting the ground.
Then, he says, he was beaten by four men while he was on the ground. As Gray came to his aid, Thomas says in the post, he was also grabbed and brought to the ground.
At one point, Gray was struck in the eye, and someone dragged Thomas’ wife away by her hair, Thomas says in the post.
In the end, Gray was left with a nasty eye wound and Thomas suffered a facial laceration. Thomas says they went for cover in an ice cream shop, but couldn’t get a response from police for about 25 minutes. Over the phone Tuesday, he said he thought it was 15-20 minutes.
Thomas said the other man — who he says walked through his group on the sidewalk — instigated the fight.
“They turned around and were very aggressive,” he said. “They were instigating a confrontation.”
Thomas admits his group said something to one of the individuals in the other group, though on Tuesday he didn’t seem to remember exactly what was said. In general, though, he said he told them his family did not want to fight.
Thomas claimed on Facebook and over the phone that his family was robbed during the fight, but that was not mentioned in the police incident report.
Both in the Atlanta TV interview and Thomas’ Facebook post, Savannah is reproached for its level of security downtown. In the Facebook post, Thomas asks for help putting “a stop on tourist attacks.”
“They need more police in that area,” Thomas said Tuesday.
Metro police regularly patrol downtown Savannah.
“We have an increased presence Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” said Julian Miller, Savannah-Chatham police spokesman. “We have an intensive police presence downtown. It particularly is intensive from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.”
The online headline for WSB-TV’s story was changed to “Local family involved in altercation in Savannah” following a news release and accompanying video Tuesday afternoon from metro police.
What police say
Videos detectives are reviewing show two groups of people — each including children — walking on River Street.
When one group encountered eight members of the Forsyth County family standing on the sidewalk about 9:45 p.m., one male avoided contact by walking onto River Street while a male and female worked their way through the family, Miller said.
Just after that male walked through the cluster of family members, he was confronted by one or two males in the family, and a verbal altercation ensued, Miller said.
The male who had walked around the family pulled the other male away and they left. But one of the males in the Atlanta-area family continued to talk to him, Miller said. He broke free from the male who was leading him away and ran back into the crowd where a fight ensued, with members of both groups trying to break it up.
The video does show a female with the second group trying to separate the parties and pulling a female family member away by her hair, Miller said, but detectives could not find any sign of a child being punched as Thomas had announced in a Facebook post.
Police were on scene within 10 minutes of the first call, but the second group had left by then, Miller said.
The videos showed that members of both groups were carrying beverages, and officers on scene reported a heavy odor of alcohol, Miller said.
“We certainly understand the frustration of a family who came to Savannah for an enjoyable weekend and ended up with injuries from an unpleasant situation,” Interim Police Chief Julie Tolbert said in the news release. “But preliminary investigations show this was not a random act. We will continue to determine all the facts as we move forward.”
Detectives are asking members of the second group, which appeared to be a family with children and an older couple, to come forward and provide their version of the altercation.
One male was wearing a yellow shirt, the other a red shirt and later took it off and was wearing a white tank top. A younger female was wearing a white skirt or shorts and a beige or yellow top. The elder male was wearing all white and a white hat.
They are asked to contact Downtown Precinct detectives via the police department’s non-emergency number at 912-651-6500.
News watched by tourism industry
Considering Savannah’s 12.4 million yearly visitors, news of out-of-towners being attacked on the street that’s the city’s primary tourist attraction can be damaging.
“Certainly, negative publicity is never a good thing, especially in our business,” said Visit Savannah President Joe Marinelli.
He said his agency had been waiting to hear and see what investigators shared with the public Tuesday.
“It’s hard to understand the context of it all, but the incident certainly did not seem unprovoked, and when you overlay the video with the police report, there seems to be consistencies,” he said. “But when you overlay that with the very one-sided interpretation that has been posted on Facebook, to me there seem to be some very big discrepancies.”
The Tourism Leadership Council was also monitoring the situation.
“Through the review of evidence made available to us, including the police report, the dispatch log, and eyewitness statements, many of the specific allegations made by this visitor have already been shown to be false,” President/CEO Michael Owens said in a news release Tuesday. “... The video evidence shows the attack may not have been unprovoked as initially reported by the visitor.”
Both Marinelli and Owens said safety is an important issue to tourism officials.
“We at Visit Savannah feel strongly that the safety of our visitors as well as our residents and our community is critical and at the top of our list of priorities,” Marinelli said.