Bowling Green Police arrested two men for assault in two separate incidents downtown on Friday morning.
An officer was on routine patrol downtown around 1 a.m., when he observed a group of people fighting in front of a bar in the 100 block of North Main Street. When the officer stepped out of his vehicle, the group reportedly dispersed.
While the officer was speaking with someone outside the bar, a male walked out of the bar and said he had just been hit in the head with a beer bottle. The officer saw blood on the side of the man’s face and called for BG Fire Division.
The bar manager identified the man who reportedly struck the other man with a beer bottle as Danny Witcher, 20, Toledo, who is a bouncer at the bar but was not working at the time.
Police checked out camera footage from downtown that showed the man hit with the bottle exiting the bar and punching an unknown person. It also showed Witcher breaking up the fight between the two.
Officers went to the home of the man hit in the head, to serve him with a criminal citation for disorderly conduct – fighting, when dispatch advised that he was at Wood County Hospital.
An emergency room doctor told police that the man had a brain bleed from being struck in the head with the beer bottle, and was being transported to a Toledo hospital.
Witcher came to the police station to talk with officers. He said that even if he’s not working, he is expected to step in when altercations arise. Witcher said a bartender approached him about the men fighting, so Witcher pushed part of the group outside. He told police he broke up the fight outside, but that the group then began to fight him.
Witcher said he was being attacked by multiple men inside the bar, when he struck one of them with the bottle.
He was arrested for felonious assault and taken to Wood County Jail.
Later that morning, around 6 a.m., police were called to the hospital for another assault report. The victim said he was in the 100 block of East Wooster Street when he reportedly tried to break up a fight in the hallway.
One of the men fighting, Jonathan Bryant, 23, of Bowling Green, reportedly pushed the man trying to intervene, causing him to fall and hit his head on a mailbox. Bryant then reportedly punched the man multiple times in the face. A witness corroborated that account. Wood County Hospital personnel told police that the victim had a concussion.
Bryant was given a criminal citation for assault, and taken to Wood County Jail.
