By Andrew Ba Tran
The Sun-Sentinel
Related: Fla. officer jumped by 75 people at water park
FORT LAUDERDALE — The brawl that erupted between high school students at an Orlando theme park on Sunday was so raucous that police officers repeatedly used chemical spray to disperse fighting teens, according to police reports released Tuesday.
While police tried to stop the fighting, about 100 young people tried to charge the gates at the Wet ‘n Wild water park to regain entry and some accosted its security staff and police, the reports said. When one officer tried to order about 20 teenagers off a bus and pulled his handgun, they told him they were not afraid, prompting him to use the chemical spray, police said.
No police officers or security guards suffered serious injuries but two Pompano Beach brothers, one of them shot in the leg, had to be taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center.
There were at least two arrests. Midelande Jean, 18, of Deerfield Beach, was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting an officer without violence and trespassing after a warning. Benson Francois, 20, of Fort Lauderdale, was charged with trespassing, Orlando police said.
Police haven’t caught the shooter but did find a .22-caliber pistol on one of the 32 buses that ferried the 1,600 students from Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties on the weekend trip to the park.
On Tuesday, 18-year-old Michael Roosevelt was back at school, hobbling around on crutches. His brother, Marlin LaGuerre, 16, was recovering from a gash to his face. Both are students at Zion Lutheran Christian School in Deerfield Beach.
The teens’ mother, Marlene LaGuerre, said Tuesday that Roosevelt called her after 4 p.m. Sunday to tell her he was waiting for his younger brother in the Wet ‘n Wild parking lot and he was looking forward to coming home.
LaGuerre said Roosevelt later told her that as a large group of people waited for buses, teens began fighting.
Roosevelt ran to see if he could find his brother and heard someone yell that his sibling had been hit. He saw his brother on the ground, bleeding profusely, as people ran by, their mother said.
While looking for the person who hurt his brother, Roosevelt heard popping sounds. He felt his left shin go numb and a sharp pain before seeing he had been shot, LaGuerre said.
Officers found spent firearms cartridges in the parking lot, the police reports said.
Jean, one of the two arrested teens and a student at Deerfield Beach High School, said Orlando police handled the disruption poorly. She said Tuesday she was still bruised from wearing handcuffs. Police said she resisted arrest.
Jean recalls sitting on the floor of a gift shop with some friends when the brawl occurred.
“I was cold - the gift shop and the bathroom were the only warm places in the entire park,” she said.
An employee asked them to leave and they slowly got up to walk out, Jean said, but a police officer arrived to escort them out.
“I can walk without you pushing me,” Jean said she told the officer.
Moments later, the officer said he saw her try to return to the shop. She denied that, and the officer told her to move to the sidewalk. She refused and the officer approached to escort her again, Jean said.
“Your breath stinks,” she said she told the officer.
According to the arrest affidavit, Orlando police Officer David McKinnon asked Jean to leave the park, saying she verbally abused employees. When the officer tried to arrest Jean, she pulled her arm away, cursed at him and jogged away, according to the report.
Jean said she ran away because she was scared, but when the officer caught up with her, he put her in a chokehold. According to the officer, Jean’s friends and relatives climbed on top of him, punching him and interfering with him as he worked to handcuff her. Jean said she could not see if anyone hit the officer.
The officer took her to the park’s holding pen and began filling out paperwork for the charges.
A spokeswoman for Wet ‘n Wild said proper security measures were in place and the park supplemented its own security with Orlando police.
“We believe we had made adequate security preparations for Sunday’s event,” Linda Orgera-Cataldo said in a statement.
Copyright 2008 The Sun-Sentinel