- April 19, 2024
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Hundreds of people fled Epic Theatres the night of Friday, Jan. 13 when a fight broke out between young men and someone yelled "Gun!"
Two Flagler County Sheriff's Office deputies were already at the cinema to remove a trespasser when theater staff at about 10:37 p.m. told them there was a "disturbance" in theater number eight, which held about 300 people.
A theater shift manager asked the deputies to calm down the crowd. The deputies called for backup, and, as they waited, an employee told them she'd overheard someone in theater eight talking about shooting someone named Tyler.
People started running out of the lobby of theater eight, and the deputies went there and found that there had been a fight at the front of the theater.
"Someone had started yelling about a gun, which caused everyone to panic," one of the deputies wrote in a case report.
About 100 people flooded the front lobby and the area in front of theater eight.
Another deputy arrived, and the three entered theater eight and found a scene of chaos.
"People (majority juveniles) were out of their seats and running out of the emergency exit as well as the main exit," the deputy wrote in the case report.
The deputies didn't see an actual fight, but many moviegoers looked unsettled, and adults at the theater told deputies that there had been fight at the front of the theater involving "numerous juvenile males."
One man "stated that he observed a juvenile male walk from the area of the front row to the emergency exit ... then opened and then slammed shut the emergency exit door." according to the deputy's report.
Then, the man told deputies, the young people up front yelled, “Gun! Gun!,” prompting other moviegoers to flee.
The witnesses did not see a firearm or hear a gunshot, and the deputies didn't smell gunpowder or find a gun, bullet hole or casing.
No one reported any injuries.
Epic staff told the deputies that they were stopping the movie, evacuating the theater and sending everyone home, and that they did not want anyone form theater eight remaining on the property.
The deputies, with the help of police officers from the Flagler Beach police Department and the Bunnell Police department, helped escort out about 400 moviegoers.
