Andrew Wolfson, Mark Boxley;and Sheldon S. Shafer

(Louisville) Courier-Journal;

Conrad considering adding horse and bike patrols to Waterfront Park.

Fischer to work with churches and community centers to find activities for kids as the weather warms up.

The teen mob violence that spawned at least 17 assaults and robberies Saturday night in downtown Louisville may have been fermenting for nearly a week – and be connected to the fatal stabbing of a 14-year-old on a TARC bus.

A TARC spokeswoman said Monday that a horde of teens attempted to storm a bus at 34th and Broadway on March 18, the same day Me’Mequale Offutt died of his injuries after he was stabbed in the heart two days earlier during a scuffle on a TARC bus.

A few hours later March 18, teenagers attacked another bus at 38th and Broadway and pelted it with rocks, said TARC spokeswoman Kay Stewart. Both buses were damaged, and both attacks were reported to police, she said.

A local businessman, Riyad Fallheen, said as many as 50 to 60 youths gathered every night last week outside his Shorty’s Food Mart, 3501 W. Broadway. He said said he reported it to Louisville Metro Police after they harassed his customers.

Police Chief Steve Conrad did not mention the earlier attacks during a news conference Sunday, when he said that Saturday’s wave of mayhem was “not common for downtown” or “any neighborhood in our city.”

Asked Monday by reporters why police didn’t respond sooner to the mass of 200 young people in Waterfront Park, he said: “I don’t have the answer to that question. It is not unusual to have several thousand people in that park. I don’t know that the people who were there were there to cause problems. Once we starting having problems, officers did respond to the problems that were there.”

Police arrested one man Saturday night, Je’Rece M. Archie, 18, and charged him with carrying a concealed deadly weapon and unlawful transaction with a minor. He is being held on a $5,000 bond.

Louisville Metro police spokesman Dwight Mitchell said the department is exploring whether those crowds and the attacks on the TARC buses were connected to either the violence Saturday night that left six people hospitalized or the stabbing in which Me’Mequale was killed and a 13-year-old girl was stabbed but survived. Anthony Rene Allen, a convicted sex offender with a history of arrests for violent and belligerent outbursts, is charged with murder.

“We’re looking at it but we don’t know for sure,” Mitchell said, adding that he confirmed another person was stabbed Sunday night on a TARC bus at 23rd and Broadway but he was not able to immediately provide any details.

Christopher 2X, a community activist who has worked with Me’Mequale’s family, said there was chatter on social media about a gathering at Waterfront Park on Saturday to release balloons during a memorial service for the boy, but 2X said it is impossible to know how many of the 200 teens at the park were there for the memorial before they set off on what police described as a rampage.

As Louisville police Monday continued to pursue leads into the spree of assaults and robberies, Conrad said the department is considering adding horse and bike patrols in Waterfront Park in response to the violence.

Mayor Greg Fischer said he would work with churches and community centers to find activities for teens as the weather warms up.

“We will try to reach out to the kids who are lost and encourage them not to fall into this group thing,” Fischer said.

He said he planned a 9:30 a.m. meeting Tuesday with his neighborhood safety team, which is convened after shootings and other violent incidents.

The frightening attacks began at about 7:45 p.m. Saturday when a man at the Big Four Bridge stepped in to keep a 13-year-old girl from being assaulted and robbed, and the mob turned on him, badly injuring him, Conrad said.

From there a group of up to 80 teens started moving through downtown, attacking people on the way, he said.

Patty Loerch, who was on the Big Four Bridge with her husband and nephew at the time of the first attack, said she saw a commotion as she walked back from the Indiana side of the bridge.

She said she saw five police cars in the parking lot on the Kentucky side of the bridge and one was driving down the ramp, but even with that visible police presence, “hundreds of teenagers were swarming on the bridge.”

Conrad said a woman, her husband and their five children were in a car waiting at a stoplight when they were attacked. The youths threw trash cans at the car and punched the woman several times in the head before she escaped to a nearby gas station. The victim, who was not identified, was taken to University of Louisville Hospital for treatment.

Police arrived and dispersed the crowd, Conrad said, but part of it reformed at Third and Chestnut streets, where another man was attacked and was taken to a hospital.

Another mob attacked a man at Fifth Street and Broadway and another person at Sixth Street and Broadway, Conrad said. Both victims were taken to hospitals for treatment, as was a woman who was assaulted in the parking lot of Bader’s Food Mart at 300 S. First St.

Moments earlier, dozens of youth stormed into the store, and one employee reported being struck as he tried to hold them back.

“It’s crazy when it starts,” manager Adam Bader said Monday night of the store’s surveillance footage. “The most important thing is the public safety. Hopefully we can finally put a stop to this kind of thing.”

Conrad tried to reassure the public that the city is still safe and that police have stepped up their presence downtown and around the Waterfront Park, although the Rev. Kevin Cosby, senior pastor at St. Stephen Church and president of Simmons College of Kentucky, said “beefed-up police force is not the answer.

“The answer is beefed up investment in west Louisville,” he said.

During a half-hour visit to Waterfront Park near the Big Four Bridge, a reporter saw no police in that area of the park.

Preparing to ride his bike across the Big Four Bridge, Brandon Ransbottom said there have almost always been police cars in the parking lots and officers around the park when he has visited.

“I never felt that it was unpoliced,” he said. ■