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More than 12 Milford police officers and mall security guards were on scene Dec. 26 when large groups of unsupervised teens converged at the mall and began fighting, pushing and shoving and ignoring officers orders, said Milford Officer Mike DeVito.
"The main reason the mall was closed was for the safety of the patrons who were legitimately shopping," DeVito said. "We did not want them to get caught up in any of the altercations."
DeVito said two security guards were injured during one of the incidents that were taking place throughout the mall.
With so many "rowdy" teens in the mall, officers were outnumbered despite the additional officers hired by the mall to assist security guards.
Once the problem became too rowdy or was "spinning out of control," a decision was made to close the mall around 7:30 p.m., two hours before the regular closing time. Once the decision had been made, officials used the loudspeaker system to inform shoppers to leave the mall and then went store to store removing everyone from the location.
No patrons were injured, DeVito said.
Police reported a similar incident occurred at the Shoppes at Buckland Hills in Manchester.
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