MEMPHIS, Tennessee — Around 7:30 on Saturday night, 300 to 400 hundred teenagers were dropped off unsupervised at Putt-Putt Golf & Games before one of them threw a firework at the group causing a stampede. The business said it needed to close shortly after that happened and could not immediately issue refunds, which angered some of the customers inside.
Putt-Putt released a statement and said they are looking for who is responsible so they can be held accountable.
"Parents chose to leave large groups of teenagers at our facility without their supervision," the general manager said. "Some of those people chose to create a disturbance the likes of which we have never seen."
The general manager said the damage was surprisingly minor, but going forward all minors must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
In a video of the incident that is going viral, a teenage girl is seen throwing a plexiglass divided, cash registers, and the line dividers at the employees behind the counter. The employees calmly moved out of the way of harm and none were hurt.
Parent activist Marcus Randolph, who has seen the video, was shocked by the frustration exhibited by the teens.
"We cannot teach our children that whenever something goes wrong we need to use our fists, or loud voices or cursing or throwing things, Randolph said.
As a father of teenagers himself, he said parents need to teach their teens to be adults in these types of situations. Randolph said these teenagers were probably happy to finally be out, but this behavior is never excusable and parents need to step up and be positive examples for their teens.
"She probably wanted to get out and have a good time which she hadn’t been able to do in all this time and it got cut short," Randolph said.
In the police report, it was noted that Putt-Putt declined a report for damages. However, a 13-year-old boy was issued a juvenile summons for disorderly conduct.