A fist flew, then a bottle ? and then everybody just started swinging. The brawl at Mount Hebron High School on Saturday that resulted in Robert Brazell?s death escalated rapidly, said Cori Geiger, 16, a junior at an area high school who was involved in the fight. He did not provide the name of the school for fear of retaliation.
“We were yelling in each others? faces and then someone threw a punch,” Geiger said.
Five minutes later, Brazell lay dying after suffering head wounds from an aluminum bat.
Kevin Klink, 18, the Columbia man and former Oakland Mills wrestler charged in Brazell?s death, struck Brazell in defense of his friend, who lay on the ground and was himself getting pummeled, Geiger said.
“He?s a great guy. He would never just murder someone,” Geiger said. “If he hadn?t hit him with that bat, my friend would have died.”
Geiger?s friend, Jacob Sams, 17, of Hammond High School, was treated for head injuries at Baltimore Shock Trauma and later released.
Howard County police charged Klink with first-degree murder, claiming he attacked an unarmed victim who had his back turned toward Klink.
Geiger did not witness the fatal blow.
“I was running from a guy with a bat,” he said.
But later, when he and others in the fight met at an Exxon Station near Mount Hebron High School, he recalled Klink saying, “I didn?t mean to do that. He was jumping my friend.”
The fight, Geiger said, pitted a mixed group of about a dozen of his friends, most of them Hammond High School students, against a group of about 15 Mount Hebron High students.
Geiger and his group carried two bats to the fight. “They were just for intimidation ? we said we weren?t going to use them,” hesaid.
The Mount Hebron students also carried an assortment of bats and bottles.
It?s unclear whether the bat Klink admitted to using when he struck an unarmed man from behind was his own, or retrieved from the ground.
One of Geiger?s friends had been in a fight with Mount Hebron the week before, touching off the feud, Geiger said.
Last Wednesday, he called his ex-girlfriend, a 15-year-old sophomore at Mount Hebron, and told her to send a message to the Mount Hebron students that he wanted to settle the score.
She relayed the message, she said in a telephone interview.
Friday night, Geiger got a call from a Mount Hebron student. He and his group were to meet at the athletic field at Mount Hebron.
His ex-girlfriend, who was at a party less than a mile from the field, said she saw a large group leave at around the time of the fight. She said she did not know if they were leaving for the brawl. The party was later broken up by police.
Klink was called before the fight. A wrestler and a friend of some of the Hammond students, he agreed to help out, Geiger said.
“We just needed people to fight. He had no beef with anyone. He just wanted to make sure no one got hurt.”
