Chaos erupted at a multicultural rugby league event in Melbourne on Friday night when masked thugs roamed through the crowd, one brandishing a machete.
The terrifying scenes unfolded at Seabrook Reserve in Broadmeadows at about 9pm during NRL Victoria’s Harmony Cup, which involves teams from 17 different cultural and ethnic groups, mainly from the Pacific Islands.
Multiple videos recorded at the event showed the black-clad thugs, one in a hood and the other in a balaclava, ran through the event, and both appeared to have olive or brown complexions.
A woman’s voice could be heard screaming “hey, he’s got a knife” while frightened families and children watched on.
“A lot of people were scared, everyone was running around, all the little kids were trying to find their mums and dads,” a witness told 7News.
Samoa Team President Dennie Memea Tenuseli said he called police when he heard someone was “on the loose with a machete”.
“They were here in less than two minutes,” he said, and then issued a warning to the pair, saying: “It doesn’t matter where you come from, I ask you to stop it, because you come back here, I’m telling you we will stand up for what’s right.”
Police were out in force at the two-day event on Saturday to reassure the crowd.
The pair of thugs fled into the carpark, and police are looking into whether they drove away from the event.
Header image: Left, the male with the machete. Right, the other male (7News).
