Parents from Ohio face charges after they rented a party bus for their child’s 14th birthday and had 60 maskless kids packed inside, police said.

Just before 10 p.m. Saturday, police officers in the northern Cincinnati suburb of Mount Healthy were called to a strip mall where dozens of kids had gotten off an unmarked bus. They were not wearing masks or practicing social distancing, and several fights broke out, the police said in a statement.

As police tried to break up the fights, one of the juveniles attempted to strike an officer, according to the police.

The officers told the bus driver to allow the juveniles to reboard the bus but the driver fled the scene, leaving approximately 60 kids in a “very agitated state for officers to deal with,” the police said.

Parents from Ohio face charges after they rented a party bus for their child’s 14th birthday and had 60 mask-less kids packed inside.(Mt Healthy PD) 

The officers tried to calm them down and keep the kids socially distanced while directing them to contact their parents to pick them up, the police statement said.

The parents who chartered the bus from downtown Cincinnati were charged with “contributing to the unruliness/delinquency of a child.” The police statement said an open invitation had been posted on social media.

The police said the event violated the coronavirus curfew issued Dec. 10 stating Ohio residents must stay at home between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., as well as a long-standing Mount Healthy curfew that bars children under 14 from being in a public space between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The police statement did not say why the kids had been brought to the strip mall, Hilltop Plaza.

The center had been the site of Playtime USA, a recreation and party space. That location reportedly shut down after a 2019 incident in which a melee broke out during an unlicensed teen dance party, resulting in at least five injuries and nine arrests, Cincinnati TV station WCPO reported. More than 350 tickets had been sold to the event.

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