Fight on 4 Wheels Flattens Fridley Fire Hydrant

It started as a verbal dispute between friends, police said, at in Fridley, about 6 p.m. Wednesday.

The fight—between one young woman on foot and another in a car—escalated.

It ended behind the SA on University Service Drive East, leaving a smashed-up red Pontiac sedan, a fire hydrant lying on its side and several heavy wooden posts knocked over.

One combatant got assistance from an Allina ambulance; the other sat in the back of a squad car.

According to Fridley Police Officer Joe Magana, the pair first exchanged words at the convenience store. Then one jumped on the other's car—and fell off as the driver tried to speed away, injuring her hand and receiving minor scrapes and bruises.

The Pontiac veered off the road into a row of posts along the perimeter of the car-sales lot. The car also knocked over a long metal bar that serves as a gate as well as a yellow City of Fridley fire hydrant.

A dozen American flags flapped in the warm evening breeze above the car lot as police handcuffed the driver, a slight young woman in a tank top and shorts, and transferred her to a female officer's squad car.

Magana described her driving as careless.

Assured that police had taken the photos and gathered the evidence they needed, several men at Autos Online set about clearing the heavy objects the crash had strewn at the business' driveway.

Police asked emergency dispatchers to let City of Fridley Public Works know a fire hydrant needed to be righted along that stretch of road.

And a crowd of 10 or more that gathered nearby slowly thinned as an Allina ambulance, a Fridley Fire vehicle and several Fridley police squads left or got ready to leave.

The two involved in the fight were not juveniles, Magana said; they were adults. Would he describe them as young women? "Very young women," Magana said.