A teen was bruised and shaken Monday, two days after being in the middle of a brawl over a lost cellphone at a Newark pizza place.
Amin Robinson, 17, took a beating at what’s supposed to be a family friendly restaurant Saturday night after his family returned to John’s Incredible Pizza at the Newpark Mall to find his sister's cellphone.
"There were so many people kicking me and punching me," Amin recalled. "And I can’t see where the hits were coming from. I could feel them all over my body."
The family had been there moments earlier for his little brother's first birthday celebration, and when Amin's sister realized her cellphone was missing, the Find My iPhone app led them back inside.
When they asked a group of people there about the phone, the group became hostile, the family said.
"They basically, they were like, 'We don’t have your f-ing phone.' They started swinging at them," said Niesha Robinson, Amin’s mother. "They basically started fighting these people off of them."
Amin said when he walked back in, he saw a full-out fight taking place. Someone had even deployed pepper spray, he said.
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"I see my sister on the floor, I see an older woman on top of her punching her, and I see a 6-year-old kid kicking her," Amin said.
Amin tried to pull his sister out, but the crowd turned on him too. The honor student who had never been in a fight before suddenly was under attack.
"I feel really bad," he said. "I keep thinking about the people who attacked me. That’s why I haven’t been able to go to sleep; I’ve been trying to get that out of my mind of what happened to me because it’s been hard."
Niesha Robinson said it appeared the group was merely looking for a fight.
"They wanted to fight somebody," she said. "They didn’t care who it was, they didn’t care about no cellphone. These people wanted to fight."
