Six charged after 21st birthday luxury cruiser brawl
WHAT should have been a night to remember turned into a horror memory one young woman wishes she could forget after being hurt in a luxury cruise boat brawl on her 21st birthday.
NSW
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WHAT should have been a night to remember turned into a horror memory one young woman wishes she could forget after being hurt in a luxury cruise boat brawl on her 21st birthday.
Several people were injured in the fight — with birthday girl Lana Marie Battaglia carried off the luxury catamaran on a stretcher after being pushed down the stairs — as police waded in to break up the fracas involving a large group of revellers.
Ms Battaglia, from Oran Park, was yesterday released from St Vincent’s Hospital.
Family friend Rose Carambano, 57, was among the 50 guests invited to attend the birthday cruise but wasn’t present when the fight started.
“It was terrible — when I heard last night I thought, she’s never going to forget this birthday. It was just awful,” Ms Carambano said.
She said Ms Battaglia was still “in a lot of pain” after suffering injuries to her hip while some of her friends had been “punched in the face”.
Officers were responding to a separate incident at King Street Wharf about 11pm last night when the ruckus erupted aboard the 30m The Constellation.
It had departed the wharf at 5.30pm but returned around five hours later in order to drop off some boozy partygoers.
But as the boat prepared to leave once again a woman jumped from the wharf into the water, causing a fight to break out on board, a police spokeswoman said.
A Constellation Cruises spokeswoman who watched the terrifying incident unfold described the fight as “absolutely disgusting”.
“Two girls were not feeling the best and so they got off the boat with their friends ... one of them didn’t want to get off and her partner was telling her she had to,” she said.
“Because she was screaming she didn’t want to get off ... it looked like she was chucking a tantrum. We were trying to leave and a big brawl happened and there were people everywhere.”
The spokeswoman said a separate group of people who “weren’t from the boat” were also part of the fracas.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever been involved with anything like this so it’s really upsetting,” she said.
Ms Carambano said the trouble started when the boat pulled back in to King Street Wharf.
“As we were getting off we saw a bunch of boys coming in and I said, ‘I don’t like the look of those people’,” she said.
“We noticed they had been drinking and they shouldn’t have been let on in the first place. The night was running smoothly, everyone had a great time and they just ruined it for everybody.”
It’s understood the cruise was organised by her Ms Battaglia’s mother, Laura, as a birthday present.
A woman, 23, a man, 24, and a man, 26, have all been charged with affray over the incident. A woman, 23, was charged with common assault, while a woman, 25, was charged with hindering police and a woman, 25, was charged with assaulting police.