A new social media trend drawing large groups of teens to businesses caused chaos at a south Toledo trampoline park on Saturday, raising concerns among parents about safety in family-oriented spaces.
Police say teens are organizing so-called “takeovers” online, coordinating massive meetups that overwhelm businesses and sometimes lead to fights. The latest incident happened Saturday night at Urban Air Adventure Park on Airport Highway.
Video shared on social media and recorded inside the park shows dozens of teens crowding the building as multiple fights break out and a mass of people running for the exit.
Parents who watched the video say the scenes are alarming, especially with number of young children who are often present at the park.
“That’s actually scary because my kid is only four and I don’t want my child around anything like that. That looked crazy,” said parent Alivia Tidwell.
Some parents say situations like this highlight the risks when large groups of unsupervised teens gather in places designed for families.
“They should probably have more security and adult supervision because that was ridiculous. Yeah, that’s kind of scary,” said Tidwell.
Another parent said she and her child had been inside Urban Air earlier in the evening and left shortly before the chaos began.
“We were here last night really. It was just kind of overpacked, and we left right before everything happened,” said parent Brittney Sturgill. “But we were here today, and it looks a lot better. They were a lot more in control today.”
Posts promoting additional “takeovers” have also circulated on social media. Most include AI-generated ads.
One such ad promoted a gathering Sunday evening at Highland Park in south Toledo. However, when a WTOL 11 reporter visited the park, it was empty, suggesting not every online post results in an actual event.
Still, the size of the crowds in some of these gatherings has raised concerns that similar incidents could happen again.
WTOL 11 reached out to Toledo police to ask whether the department has a strategy to respond to these events. As of Sunday evening, the department had not yet responded.