WATERVILLE — A May Street apartment where a brawl broke out early Tuesday morning involving up to 30 people is notorious for rowdy parties, drinking, violence and drugs, according to neighbors in the otherwise quiet residential neighborhood.
The melee was reported shortly before 4 a.m. Tuesday at 4 May St., where police found an unconscious 27-year-old man suffering from serious facial injuries. The injured man, whom police didn’t identify and had yet to interview Tuesday, was taken to MaineGeneral’s Thayer Center for Health for treatment.
Many of the people involved in the fight fled from the scene on foot when Waterville police officers arrived in the neighborhood, which is between Drummond and College avenues in the northeast section of the city.
The people whom officers detained and questioned cooperated to varying degrees, and some refused to answer questions, according to Deputy Chief Charles Rumsey. Police still are investigating, and so far no arrests have been made.
Neighbors on Tuesday afternoon said loud, disruptive drinking parties are the norm at the apartment on the bottom floor of a two-story house with white siding. They said there are often many people at the apartment yelling, fighting and playing loud music until the early hours of the morning. The disruptions have meant sleepless nights and caused some to consider moving out of the neighborhood.
Donna Simpson, who lives in an apartment on Oak Street around the corner from the May Street house, said loud noise woke her up at 3:15 a.m. Tuesday. She didn’t know later that there had been a brawl, but she wasn’t surprised, given the frequent loud parties.
When she moved into her apartment three months ago, she thought it was in a nice quiet neighborhood, Simpson said. But after dealing with clamor almost every night, she thinks making the move was “the biggest mistake I ever made” and is looking to get out of the neighborhood.
“It’s scary, living here by myself,” she said.
Rumsey said police have gone to the apartment a number of times in the recent past in response to complaints about loud noise, fights and drug issues and are keeping a close eye on the apartment. There probably will be more patrols in the area after the brawl Tuesday night, he added.
Investigators suspect the fight might have started when two to three men confronted the injured man about “bad blood” related to something that had happened a few years ago, Rumsey said. The confrontation escalated and drew in other people on both sides until it turned into a general brawl, he said.
The injured man was asleep when officers went to speak with him after the fight, and medical staff members still were assessing the full extent of his injuries, Rumsey said.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Lindsey Booker Burrill, who works for Brown House Realty, which owns the property, said the police hadn’t informed her about the brawl, but she was aware of ongoing issues on May Street.
“It is not something I tolerate in my apartments,” Burrill said. Only one person’s name is on the lease, but the apartment has three bedrooms, according to Burrill.
The tenants haven’t been paying their rent, and last week she started the eviction process, she said. “I am in the process of getting them out.”
The apartment also has been the subject of a drug investigation. Waterville police staged an early-morning raid on the apartment in February, arresting resident Shakieta Rhodes-Jones, who was discovered to have 2.5 grams of heroin stashed inside a balloon secreted in her body. Three other people were arrested on separate charges during the raid.
Dawn and Nicole Boucher, who live on May Street, said they didn’t expect to run into problems when they moved to their apartment three years ago. At first, a different apartment hosted loud parties, and Nicole Boucher remembered hearing fistfights and finding an intoxicated person on their lawn. Last year her car was burglarized and some of her things were stolen, although police recovered them.
“We didn’t think we were moving to the ghetto when we moved here,” she said.
In the last year or so, the 4 May St. apartment has been the epicenter for trouble in the neighborhood, Dawn Boucher said. The problems get worse in the summer, when there seems to be a nonstop party at the apartment, she said.
It makes the neighborhood feel unsafe, Dawn Boucher said, especially with her two children in the house. The Bouchers have had to call the police when things seemed to get out of hand.
“We call, but we don’t go over there. It’s too scary,” Nicole Boucher said. Both women said they thought an increased police presence in the area could make the apartment less attractive for parties.
Another couple who have owned a home on May Street for 28 years said the street was normally quiet and peaceful, but after a landlord bought the house a few years ago, noise and drugs became a chronic problem. It’s common for parties to go on for two or three nights straight, and they have seen tenants still up drinking at 8 a.m., they said.
The couple didn’t want to be identified, saying they worried that the tenants at 4 May St. would retaliate against them.
They said police could step up patrols in the area, particularly between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m., when disruption at the house is at its worst.
Rumsey encouraged people who see problems in the area to contact the police. “We ask people to be our eyes and our ears in the community,” he said.
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