Fights break out on Walnut St.

Fights between teenage girls broke out in front of two movie theaters early yesterday evening, causing a ruckus which flooded nearby sidewalks with excited adolescents. University Police officer Margaret O'Malley, who helped break up one fight at the United Artist Campus movie theatre on 40th Street, said it was "an annual thing" for "teenage kids to act stupid" on Easter Sunday. University Police Sergeant Keith Christian also blamed the crowds on the holiday. "Easter brings out crowds of teenagers from the area and they congregate on 40th and Walnut because of the movie theaters, the arcade and the fast food restaurants," he said. Although O'Malley was unable to say why the girls were fighting in the first place in front of the United Artist, witnesses of each of the two fights -- the other taking place in front of the AMC Walnut Mall 3 movie theater -- each had different ideas of what initially sparked the brawls. Eighteen-year-old Craig Bishop said the fight in front of the United Artist was between "two Caucasian girls" in their mid-teens. One of the girls became angry when the other "smacked her on the head with a box of popcorn," he said. Nineteen-year-old Arch Long disagreed. He said the fight on 40th Street was "over a pair of sneakers." Cory Bee, 18, did not know why two or three girls began fighting in front of the AMC theater, but he was able to describe the brawl. "This bitch grabbed the other bitch by the hair and started pounding her head on the ground, and then the cops came," he said. Smah Ali, 17, said the fight on Walnut Street happened because one of the teenage girls was jealous of the other adolescent's good looks, although both were "all-right looking." "You know how females get," he said. Ali confirmed Bee's description of the fight, though. "One girl slammed the other girl into the ground," he said. But, Christian, who was on the scene, said no one was seriously injured in the fights. "These were not knock-down dragouts," he said. Christian added that while no arrests were made, both University and Philadelphia Police dispatched extra officers to the area for the rest of the evening. Daily Pennsylvanian Staff Writer Gregory Thomas contributed to this article.