A brawl broke out this afternoon adjacent to the ongoing football game between the Florida Gators and the Georgia Bulldogs, leaving one man with serious injuries at the hospital and another in police custody. Georgia is technically hosting the game at EverBank Field, the home of the Jaguars, where the Jacksonville PD Homicide unit is interviewing bystanders after, as multiple news outlets have reported, pulling a man from a nearby pond.


The early details, from First Coast News (the NBC and ABC affiliate in Jacksonville):

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office homicide unit is responding to EverBank Field. An eyewitness saw a man who wasn't moving being pulled out of the water of a nearby retention pond. Other witnesses tell First Coast News that a large fight broke out. One man was put in back of a police car and another was pulled out of the pond.


WJXT in Jacksonville reported that two men fought outside the stadium during the first half of the game, and that one was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. The other is in custody, and the witnesses were part of a large crowd that watched the fight. The Florida Times-Union describes the fight as "a brawl." A police officer told WJXT, "There's a lot of people partying, however homicide just got on the scene ... so they're going to sort through all those details."

It's too early to say whether the fight was directly related to the game, or between fans in town for the match-up between SEC rivals, but the note from the police officer that "a lot of people" were "partying" next to the stadium seems to imply as much. We'll update when we know more.

The pond in question, with the edge of the stadium on the left:


UPDATE, 7:12 p.m.: First Coast News upgrades the injured man's outlook, says the injuries are not likely to be life-threatening after all.

[WJXZ / Florida Times-Union / First Coast News]

Update (12:50 a.m.): Video added above of what we're told is the incident. From here, and edited to make it viewable. H/t to Joshua.