‘When you’re going through menopause, it’s game on’: Hero mums, Michelle Hanna and Joanna Cheetham break up wild TTP fight

Ignoring danger and putting themselves at risk, two Adelaide mums are unlikely heroes after breaking up a dangerous teen brawl at a popular shopping centre. Read what they put their heroism down to.

• Watch: Moment mums stop brawl

Hero Adelaide mothers told last night how they ignored danger to break up a wild teenage brawl at a suburban shopping centre – with one warning: “When you’re going through menopause, forget it, it’s game on”.

Retail workers Michelle Hanna, 51, and Joanna Cheetham, 55, were on shift at different stores at Westfield Tea Tree Plaza, when the brawl erupted at 3pm on Wednesday.

Joanna Cheetham and Michelle Hanna broke up a fight between teens at TTP. Photo supplied.

But the friends of 25 years, ignored their own personal safety after hearing yelling and then watching as a gang of teenage boys and girls, believed to be 17 and 18, attack another male, understood to be 17.

It is understood the brawl erupted amid claims $14 was stolen from one of the group. No arrests have been made after the gang fled.

Video footage posted to social media showed the female pair break up the fight as users hailed the women heroes.

The pair last night denied they were heroes – instead mothers who thought of their own children, and became angry knowing young families were witnessing such wanton violence while shopping at the popular centre, in Adelaide’s northeast.

Mrs Hanna, a mother-of-three of Salisbury Heights, said she ran out of her store after witnessing teenage boys throwing punches as well as stomping and kicking on the alleged victim.

“I saw this group fighting, there was really loud yelling and I just didn’t think and ran out,” she said.

“A lot of people were walking past and no one was trying to help.

“I’m 51 years-old, a small-business owner, a retail worker with stresses of my own in my life, and I’m going through menopause. I don’t have to put up with this sh**. No one has to put up with it.

FLEXING ON THEM: Michelle Hanna helped break up the fight at TTP. Picture: supplied

HAVE A GO HERO: Joanna Cheetham helped break up the fight in TTP. Picture: supplied

“There were young kids everywhere. I later told the policeman ‘when you have menopause, forget it, it’s game on’.”

Mrs Hanna, who also owns a pizza shop in the northeastern suburbs with her husband of 28 years Les, 54, said she held one boy in a brief headlock as she tried to break up the fight.

They tried to split the group in another shop but to no avail as the brawl escalated.

“Clearly, they’re just little ratbags,” she said.

“They were going for this young boy’s head. I thought ‘this is not going to end well’.

“These kids need to know the dangers of what they are doing. If that boy hit his head on the ground, or got stomped the wrong way on his face, and suffered a fracture, that’s his life gone – and theirs also.

“If that was my kid I would like to think someone would step in and help. But having said that none of my kids would do anything like that.”

Mrs Cheetham, a mother of four of Golden Grove, said she was alerted to the brawl from loud yelling outside her store on the centre’s first level.

“It was really loud, and I saw these kids punching and punching and kicking this poor boy,” she said.

“I thought they would stop when I intervened but they just kept going.

“I didn’t even think about myself.

“All I could think about was what if that was my children and that I had to do something. “Reflecting on it, I’ve thought why.

“And I get a bit of PTSD when I hear yelling in the centre.”

SA Police are investigating.

Originally published as ‘When you’re going through menopause, it’s game on’: Hero mums, Michelle Hanna and Joanna Cheetham break up wild TTP fight