Newswire "Flash mob" fall-out: A multiple-perspective account of the North Philly roving mob attack

Earlier this week, we brought you news about last weekend's assault by a mob of teenagers on a group that included our own Emily Guendelsberger. As of now, Emily is still hospitalized, recovering from surgery to repair a broken leg suffered in the attack. But before she went under the knife, she managed to share her story plus the stories of others that were with her on Saturday night when the mob of teenagers attacked. Here is their story.

My leg is killing me right now—a “flash mob” beat the hell out of my friends and me and broke my tibia; I’m getting it surgically screwed back together tomorrow afternoon—they’re giving me a TSA card! [Editor’s note: Emily wrote this on Wednesday night; the last we heard, the surgery went well.] This hospital has no wi-fi; there’s only a single room with a single Internet connection accessible to patients, and I have finally made my way to it. Unfortunately, I cannot bring my beautiful morphine-dispensing button with me, and this wheelchair is clearly made for a child and is very uncomfortable.

Despite its lack of wi-fi, the hospital did give me a double room all to myself. I’m not sure whether this is because I traumatized my previous elderly, Jesus-loving roommate by excessively using the words “fucking” and “fucked-up” while relating what it’s like to get beat up by several dozen people, or whether it’s, as a bunch of people told me when they showed up to visit Monday, because I got “Internet famous.” (I am not making this up: Mayor Nutter called my cell phone. It was out of control.) As long as I no longer have to listen to the Jesus channel/infomercials at full volume at all hours, I don’t care how the private room happened.

So, of course, once I’d gotten stabilized in the hospital, I immediately started Googling “Guendelsberger flash mob.” One of the first things that came up early Sunday morning was an op-ed I wrote for the Philadelphia Daily News last year about why using the term “flash mob” to describe the large groups of black kids that adults assumed were organizing on “The Twitter” belied a fundamental misunderstanding of what was going on. Now the Google search results are so overwhelmed with stuff about “Guendelsberger flash mob” that I can’t even find that link anymore.

So what happened?

At around 9:30, nine friends, my boyfriend, and I left our house at 15th and Green to go to another friend’s house. Two lagged behind to get in a car and drive down, nine walked down Green Street towards Broad to get on the subway. You could hear a big ruckus around the corner, but couldn’t see any of the kids yet. We hit the corner at the same time as the first big group of maybe 40-50 kids, and a couple girls in that group screamed that we needed to run away. I kind of thought they were making fun of us at first, but a couple seconds later, a kid in a sweatshirt came running out of the crowd and cold-cocked the closest male from our group right in the face. That friend, showing kind of amazing restraint, looked very pissed but managed not to swing back (and thank God—but more on that in a minute); he just turned around and started walking away. So did most of us. And this surge of boys came running after us.

They clearly didn’t want to rob us; they wanted to beat up the men in our group. I was barely a target; I think I was the only girl in the group to get my ass kicked because I tried to join a bunch of not-into-how-this-night-was-going girls from the mob who were doing this human-shield thing to prevent their friends from going after my friends. Yes, brilliant, I’m aware. But don’t let anyone convince you that there is a rational thought process involved when it comes to situations like this if you don’t have some very specialized training.

That brilliant plan obviously didn’t work, and I ended up marooned in the middle of this hostile group of kids as maybe 20-30 guys ran down the street after my friends. Someone behind me grabbed my purse, I automatically yanked back on it; someone punched me in the face, I tried to run, but twisted my leg and hit my head when I fell, then ended up clutching my purse in the fetal position and screaming as I got hit a bunch more times.

I kind of lost it there for a few minutes, but next thing I remember I was not surrounded by boys anymore, still somehow clutching my purse, with my friend Meg and a few girls I didn’t know telling me I needed to stop screaming, get up, and run. When I tried to stand on my right leg, there was this very clear, nasty “snap, crackle, pop,” and I fell back over screaming some more. Thankfully, the cops rolled up around then.

The cops asked us all if we could ID the kids who had attacked us. The answer all around was, “Well, it’s those hundred motherfuckers over there!” as the kids hadn’t so much scattered as reformed a block south at Spring Garden. Unfortunately, the cops said they needed specific positive IDs to arrest specific people, and if we couldn’t pick out any faces, they couldn’t grab anyone. They looked as irritated about this as we were, to their credit.

I couldn’t walk at all, so an ambulance was called. I begged them, weeping, to take me to Penn Hospital, where urban legend has it that financial ruin from bills can be avoided via some magical university-related tax write-off. The drivers seemed sympathetic, but were only allowed to take me to the two closest hospitals. My male friends started turning up like a crew of zombies, all bloody and puffy-faced. My boyfriend had the perfect imprint of a sneaker sole on his forehead, which made me cry even worse.

Based on what I heard from the cops, the term “flash mob” is especially out of place in our attack: The kids who jumped us (my high-school-teacher friend pegged them at around 13-16 years old) were not gathered together to wreak havoc via some inane Twitter call of “Let’s go wreck Whitey!” Rather, they had apparently wandered south on Broad from a festival on Susquehanna. That’s just a mob. If the attack had been organized on Twitter, the call to arms would probably have been “Let’s go wreck everything!” This attack has spurred a lot of really ugly talk about blacks targeting whites. Although I guess it’s a reasonable assumption that a white girl would have exclusively white friends, my brown boyfriend is getting increasingly annoyed about how the victims are being automatically classified as white—plus, the mob, in a less-publicized hit at Fairmount and Broad right before us, beat up a group of two women in headscarves and a Latino man whom we met in the hospital later. I am reasonably confident that we were just there.

Another strange thing: The story got reported as 30-40 men beating up only me—and filed on the police report as a single assault and robbery of only me. Neither of these things is true, although the skew is sort of understandable; I was the only one of us who was too immobile to go running around checking up on everyone after it all went down, so the cops probably heard mostly my story, and I’m short and only saw about 40 people. Since most of them got cut out of the official story, I’d like you to hear it from them.

Charlie
As I got to the corner we met, like, a huge crew of teenagers head-on, and the first people in that group were like, “You better run! You should run; it’s a flash mob!” It was a mix of people who sounded like they were actually trying to get us to run and protect us and people who were doing it like it was taunting. It was kind of impossible to tell the intent.

So I don’t know if I actually said it or if it was just what I thought and was turning around to say, but I was like, “Okay, guys, we should go back, we should get out of here,” and that’s when I got punched really hard in the face. (Laughs.) And I think, honestly, the only reason I didn’t end up getting completely rolled is because I didn’t fall over. I turned, saw Jay and Christina, and was like, “Guys, run.” And I ran with them.

I lost the person following me halfway down the block, but I think that was just because he realized that one of him against one of me wasn’t the same fun thing as him and all his friends against the people that they’d already caught.

When we got to Hannah’s car, I saw that nobody else made it, so I jumped around the corner and called 911 immediately. As I was on the phone with the dispatcher, she was asking me for details I didn’t have, so I was like, “I don’t know, just get to Green and Broad.” And then she was like, “Okay, now we’ve got more calls coming in from there; we’ll dispatch someone.” So I turned back around the corner and started coming back, but the cops showed up, like, right then. But I’m pretty sure the cop that got to us first was the one who had responded to the incident at Broad and Fairmount.

I didn’t really talk to the police. I felt like I wasn’t that badly hurt, and they were justifiably trying to get information out of the people who were. Physically, in terms of an assault it was at least six people. And I remember it being a whole lot more people in the mob than was reported; like, I got out onto the sidewalk further than [the rest of the group of] you guys and I got a look up Broad, and it was, like, a shit-ton more people than the 40 or 50 I’ve seen reported in a couple places.

Christina
Jay and I had fallen behind because we were walking with Meg and Hannah to the car, so we were almost jogging to catch up. And then we saw this huge group of kids walking down the street. Jay’s and my immediate reaction was: “STOP, walk backwards.” It’s really hard to tell how many there were; it seemed like they were multiplying because they were all walking down [Broad] street, but it was 30, or maybe 40, kids that curved off the pack to come down [Green Street] toward us.

At first, I thought, “Emily and Rajiv are going to try to walk with this huge group down to the subway, and … (laughs) that’s not cool.” So Jay and I were like, “If that’s what’s going to happen, we’re going to start not doing that; we’re not following them.” Then it’s sort of a blur, but I remember hearing someone shout “run,” and then, almost at the same time, they punched Charlie in the face. I couldn’t see, so I don’t know if he fell or whatever, but he turned around and he looked completely shocked. He looked dazed for a minute, and then he started to run, and we were like, “We’re gonna run, too.” We thought everyone was running at that point. And Jay is yelling at me to run faster. (Laughs.) He looks really worried, and I don’t run as fast as he does, and I’m in flip-flops, and I’m thinking we’re just going to keep running until they catch up with us. But Jay sees [Hannah’s] car, so we both jump in and he calls 911. Then I see that James is on the ground getting beat up, and I also think I see flashing lights, almost immediately after he called, down the street.

Then Meg gets out of the car, and Jay and I are both like, “What is she doing?” And she starts walking that way, and somehow the people start moving as soon as they see her coming. I think maybe as Meg was walking the police were coming behind her, or they could tell that the group was breaking up. I think it was both that she looked authoritative and people were starting to move on because the police were at the end of the street. And it would make sense that if there was already an incident on Fairmount that they would be close by.

So then Hannah and I are in the car, and Hannah says, “We should go out and check.” So we see who’s okay and who’s not okay. We walk up and down the street and see James and Tommy. We asked, “Where’s Rajiv?” because we didn't see Rajiv anywhere; he disappeared. And Jay’s calling him, asking, “Where are you?” because Emily’s hurt, and then when he walks back, he’s shaky and he’s not walking straight, like (makes weaving motion with hands).

Everything happened so quickly; you can’t really identify people. I was there when people talked to the cops; I didn’t say anything to them. Meg was like, “What are you going to do?” She wanted answers.

Meg
I was in the car with Hannah, and we heard a lot of noise, and I started to freak, because it sounded exactly like the big fights we get at [the North Philadelphia public high school where I teach]. And that’s when Jay and Christina ran to the car, banging on the car, screaming to let them in. And I looked out the window and I saw James and Rajiv on the ground being kicked around by at least five to 10 kids each. So I ran out of the car at them, yelling, “What are you doing? Leave them alone! I saw you [Emily] on the ground surrounded by girls. They weren’t helping you so I shouldered through everyone and I picked you up off the ground. All the girls were talking and saying, “I can’t believe this,” and asking, “Oh my God, is she okay?” Everyone was talking at once.

I have a memory of girls talking, and they were saying, “What the fuck, I can’t believe that happened, oh my God.” They looked pretty young and at that point there were a lot of them. By the time the ambulance came and we were reeling from the whole thing and standing around, most of those girls were gone. I think there were only three or four who stuck around. When you were on the ground there were a lot of people around you, more than just the girls who stuck around.

[When the police arrived] I was mad, and they asked me if I could remember anybody, any specific people who were attacking, and I was just kind of angry, and I said no. I really didn’t look at anyone’s face. I have images in my head of young guys and they had white T-shirts on, but I can’t imagine anyone’s face at all. They were like, “Could you recognize any of them?” And I said no, absolutely not. But I said it was that group, they’re moving down Broad Street right now, did you not see that huge group of kids? And they said of course we did, they were saying like walking down Broad Street, even in a huge group, isn’t illegal. And I said right, I get that, but they’re beating people up. They’re assaulting people.

AVC: This is something I remember that so far nobody else has come up with: when the cops were talking to us and asking if you could identify anybody, I remember one of the girls who was standing around me that I didn’t know, the group was still going by in fits; like there would still be just like 20 kids would randomly walk by the alley we were in. And at one point one of the girls just turns and points to the people walking by and goes, “It’s them, it’s those kids, that group, those kids.” I thought that was weird and complicated, because it was them, that was the group that did it, but it wasn’t technically those kids.

Meg: It wasn’t those kids who were walking by at that point, because then they were already halfway down Broad. I pointed too, I don’t remember that girl saying that, but I also pointed with my hands, like gestured toward that group of kids, meaning the kids who are now walking down Broad. I wasn’t implying that they should go arrest random kids, but I was trying to say you could try to go after them. I was just mad because the cops kept giving me excuses for why we couldn’t do anything, and I felt like were being blamed because we couldn’t identify people.  

Rajiv
Charlie and Tommy are in front of me, and some kid goes up and punches Charlie right in the jaw. Charlie turns around immediately and walks back, and Tommy turns around to follow him, and some kids start pushing him, and then all the kids start running at us. They took up the entire sidewalk and part of the street. It gets a little fuzzy at that point, but I turned to run. I definitely remember seeing Tommy’s back and seeing kids punch him in the back of the head. Kids at that point were grabbing my shirt, and I was trying to hit their hands off my shirt, and they started punching me in the back of the head and grabbing my shirt and jumping on me. Then I was just covering my face and curling up so I didn’t get kicked too much in the head.

When it stopped I was very disoriented; I think I was running in wavy lines, holding onto the wall. I didn’t get away, they had just moved on—but I was still thinking, “Get away.” All of a sudden I wound up in front of [a neighbor’s] house, and I told her to get inside because there was a mob. Then I came back to find [Emily]. 

Hannah
I was in the car already, and I heard this huge commotion. It sounded like more than a hundred kids, but I don’t know because I could only see the edge of the mob. And then I saw everybody running towards us, then past the car, and then Jay and Christina ran into the car and slammed the doors, and told me, “Lock the doors! Lock the doors!”

Meg was initially in the car, yelling, “Lock the doors! Lock the doors!” but she changed her mind; I think she saw you [Emily] and other people being hurt, and she ran out of the car toward the mob, and I was yelling (laughs) after her because I didn’t know what was going on. I saw her run up and shout at some kids, but it’s very jumbled in my memory, unfortunately. I do remember that Meg was barefoot, and James was too. And I know everyone’s glasses fell off! We were bringing glasses to each other for a good 10 minutes.

I do have one image in my head of James on the ground in the fetal position being kicked, and it was just really weird and unreal. It looked like a movie; it looked like it was staged. So I had this thought in the back of my mind: “Maybe I can fit everyone into my car, and I can get them away from here.” That was silly, obviously, because I drive a hatchback. (Laughs.) But then the mob withdrew, and the cops were there as soon as they were gone, and then it was just me and Christina in the car—Meg and Jay having gotten out—and I was talking out loud to myself; I said, “Okay, I think we can go help them now.” I’m afraid I wasn’t much help after that, though; I just milled around very nervously.

James
We kind of just stared at each other for a few seconds; some kids were yelling stuff at us. It could have gone either way, but that one kid punching Charlie really pushed it over the edge. He came out of nowhere, and then just immediately ran away. Then some kid came out of the blue and punched Charlie in the face. I think the first act of violence kind of boiled it over, and people started rushing at us; people were yelling “run,” so I ran. I got maybe a quarter of a block away. Then I kicked off my sandals, because they were slowing me down, and kept running.

I remember thinking I was running really fast. Then this kid who’s, like, 10 times faster than me catches up with me, smirks, then just turns and punches me in the face. I went down, got kicked in the face a couple times, got back up, ran a little bit more, then got knocked down again. Then I don’t really remember much. I didn’t think they were trying to steal anything. I had my wallet and phone on me; I didn’t lose anything. They weren’t grabbing at any of my stuff. It was more of a beat down.

Meg came running at us and scared some kids off. Getting up was fucking nuts, because our shit was strewn all over the street; all our friends were a mess. Dan’s face was pretty swollen, and you [Emily]—I didn’t go within six feet of you because you were shrieking. I was trying to be less of a jerk, because you already had enough people crowded around you.

I feel like the cops showed up right after the crowd dispersed, but I don’t really even remember getting up, so I don’t know how quickly they showed up. Only two cops showed up, which seems like too few, and they called an ambulance and told us there wasn’t much they could do. I didn’t talk to the cops much; I was in shock a little bit, and someone sent me to get ice packs. I think I could have had a police report filed, but I was really more about getting home and taking a shower.

Dan
We hit the corner sort of at the front of the mob, I don’t really think any of the mob was past Green at that point. Then we were only there for, like, five to 10 seconds before that dude punched Charlie in the face. And it was maybe another five to 10 seconds before there were like 100 people going down the street, and 20 to 25 people, maybe less—I don’t know, I’m not good at this—charged everyone.

I had turned around and started going the other way when people started running from behind us, and I got punched in the back of the head. I was like, “Aw, man, my glasses are gonna get broken!” That’s literally the first thing I thought about. But they didn’t! They fell on the ground; they were fine!

Kids were like, “Get his pockets!” But nothing got stolen from me. I wasn’t protecting it or anything. I don’t know exactly when it stopped, but it did, and I saw you on the ground, so I sort of dove on top of you, but they may have already stopped hitting you; I’m not sure. Then I tried to move you, and then realized you were hurt. Then that’s about when the cops came. I’m not exactly sure how it stopped, but I got kicked a lot of times in the head, so my recollection is probably not the best.

I asked the guy [police officer] if he wanted a statement, he said no. I guess he said no, I don’t know. The thing was recorded as an assault and attempted robbery on you, right? [Editor's note: As Emily mentioned, those are the only incidents that have been officially reported thus far.] They didn’t take anyone else’s statement.

Tommy
As far as I can remember, I was just stunned by the enormous size of the crowd we had walked up on. That already kind of made me take a step back. Then there were shouts from the crowd telling us to “Run!” I thought it was just dumb kids horsing around or something. Then, out of nowhere, a kid comes at a running sprint from my left and hit Charlie, who was standing to my right. I saw Charlie go down then immediately pop back up and book it in the direction we came. After that, I don’t remember the exact order of events, but I started to run. I was being chased by maybe three different kids who were punching me in the back of the head as I ran. One of the kids was able to run next to me and punch me in the neck/jaw area and that sent me to the ground. But I immediately popped back up and kept running to Hannah's car. When I turned around, they were no longer chasing me, and Meg was on her way to the scene. Then the crowd started to disperse and I heard sirens coming...

Jay
Christina and I were actually jogging to catch up to you guys when you got to the corner, 20 feet or so behind you, and then that big group got there right when you guys did. It was sort of surprising just because it was so many people. It looked like about a hundred people to me. That was what I thought. Then I saw Charlie get punched, and I couldn’t really hear anything so I wasn’t sure if people were saying anything. I just remember him stumbling back towards us and watching him and watching the crowd just trying to get a sense of if this was going to get out of hand or not, I wasn’t really sure if that was the end of it or just the beginning. Then he started running towards us, and we kind of turned, and we weren’t running, but jogging in the other direction to put a little distance between us and that group, and then I just remember the whole group charging everybody, and then everybody running down the street. Then it’s all really fuzzy, I just remember running down the street, and seeing Hannah’s car, and hopping in the back seat and calling the police as fast as we could. I got a hold of them right away, and it seemed to happen really fast. I remember calling the police and just as I was finishing with them I remember Meg getting out of the car and yelling at the kids who were still there.

Most of the kids had left, and I also remember when she got out of the car seeing police lights at the end of the street. I think the cops were already on their way when I was calling because they were there pretty fast. I remember Meg getting out of the car and thinking "Oh shit, people are going to get hurt here." Then I could see flashing lights; it was confusing when I got out of the car. Those girls who had stopped—it was disorienting. I wasn’t sure who was who, it was all strangers. I didn’t know if they were part of the original group or what they were doing, but obviously at that point the people who had attacked you guys had run off.

Before the cops drove down to Green, I walked down to Broad to make sure it was going to come to us. One of the girls who had stopped, I just saw them after the fact, one of them was already there talking to the cop. I remember seeing people coming down Broad Street when I walked over to that car. There were still people coming.

All I remember people asking was if they knew anything about the giant group on Broad Street, and then saying no, and the police saying all they could do was something along the lines of chances are good they’ll attack somebody else, and we’ll get them then, we can’t do anything right now. I remember one of them specifically saying "We can’t just go start arresting or picking up black juvenile males." Then he said, "We can’t do anything right now because you can’t identify anybody." I also remember people saying we understood that they should break up the group at least or do something since it was such a large group. And they said basically that if they scattered it would be worse so they weren’t going to do that.

Molly
We're walking down the street and I heard, "Run, run!" like everyone else, but I didn't pay attention, because groups of teenagers will yell stupid shit at you all the time. I live off South Street, and teenagers—of both races, mind you—will yell shit at you all the time, and they're just trying to be tough. We stopped and waited for them to pass. And then that kid came flying out of nowhere and clocked Charlie in the face. Charlie reeled back, holding his face and looking confused.

That's when people—mostly girls, one or two dudes—started to form a line in front of us to block other kids from moving forward. They weren't particularly successful, but who could be? One particularly tall guy stood in front me, and at one point [he] turned and said, “Don't move!” So I didn't, mainly because I was terrified. When kids started to push through, the line broke and mostly bailed or crowded around you [Emily]. I sat there dumbfounded for a second, until I just saw packs of people kicking and beating all of our friends.

Then I started running toward you and Dan, because you were closest, and ran into Meg who yelled, "Is Emily in there?" I honestly didn't know because there were so many people around, I just saw Dan because he's bigger than you. Meg pushed through the crowd and propped you up against the wall. Then I went to your house to get ice. On the way, I ran into Rajiv who had a towel to his head and was bleeding all over the place. He was making his way toward you. Then I saw your neighbor, who was trying to talk to me about the ambulance, but I wasn't really paying attention to what she was saying because I was pretty focused on ice. When I got to your place, I couldn't open the door because I'm terrible at unlocking doors anyway and because my hands were shaking. James came into the doorway and we hugged for a while. When I got back, the ambulance had arrived.

Closing thoughts
First: I’ve heard a lot of armchair quarterbacking about what we should have done, especially from people who are into concealed-carry and Bernie Goetz. I always carry pepper spray. But with the adrenaline going through my brain, if the thought, “Hey, I have pepper spray!” had squeezed through the wall of fight-or-flight—“SHIT FUCK SHIT FUCK SHIT!”—it would have done worse than no good. Unless you are literally Charles Bronson, you just don’t win fights where you’re outnumbered 20 to 1, even if you have a gun. Suggesting that shooting a gun into a crowd of crazed, violent teenagers would have somehow made them less crazed or violent I think means that you are drawing on imagination rather than memory. Just let me assure you: I was there. It wouldn’t have been a good scene.

Second: A lot of people have posted comments with the classic “I’m not racist, but…” lead-in asking why the media is “scared” or “too politically correct” to report that all of the attackers were black and all of the victims were white. Well, you heard it here first: My boyfriend, whose forehead has an exact, terrifying imprint of a tennis-shoe sole on it, is not white, and is tired of people assuming he’s white because they want to see this as some sort of race war. And as I mentioned earlier, several other victims of this mob were also non-whites.

Yes, all of the kids I saw come after us were black.

But so were the girls in the group who were clearly not into the way the night was going and who screamed to warn us.

And so were the girls from Jersey who actually stopped their car and got out to help me while I was on the ground all busted up.

Will I probably be twitchy around large groups of young black men for a while? Yes. Does that substantiate the creepy racist bullshit that this incident seems to have attracted? No.  

The negativity has been disheartening. From the evil kids who put me in the hospital, and who thought it would be fun or funny to beat the shit out of my friends to the people from Drudge, gleefully wondering how "the little white lib feels now," the experience has been a lesson in the depths humanity can fall to.

But to everyone else, especially my friends and coworkers, thank you so much for your support, whether it was donating or visiting me in the hospital or just saying something nice. And there have been plenty notes of support from complete strangers, both in Philadelphia and outside the city. It's made me feel better about the world like you wouldn’t believe.

And, finally, I will not be moving in with my auntie and uncle in Bel-Air, but I appreciate the hundreds of suggestions.