Number 9 Phillip Roberts
In late January of 2015, at a 24 Hour Fitness facility in Irving, Texas, a man randomly stabbed
another gym goer while she was on the treadmill. Local authorities were first called to the gym
after witnesses had noticed suspicious behavior from 32-year-old Phillip Roberts, who was wearing
a trench coat and carrying a suitcase. Roberts had been working out with a guest membership
and regulars at the gym had seen him with his suitcase before. Another call was placed, roughly
20 minutes after the first, to report that Roberts had repeatedly stabbed a woman with a screwdriver.
Justin Harper, a former police officer for the Blue Mound Police Department, was working out only
a few feet from where the attack had occurred. Roberts had approached the unnamed victim,
as she was walking on the treadmill, and stabbed her in the back. Afterwards, both he and her,
fell in front of Harper’s treadmill. The former officer and another gym goer tackled the attacker
and held him to the ground. Harper later told a media outlet that he suspected Roberts had
mental health issues, noting that he had a “crazed glazed-over look in his eyes”. It was only after
the police had arrived at the scene that Harper saw Roberts had a particularly dull Philips head
screwdriver with him. The victim was rushed to a Dallas hospital with three puncture wounds to her
neck and back, from which she was reportedly left with a punctured lung. Fortunately, she wasn’t
described as being in life-threatening condition. According to Harper, whom the victim’s husband
thanked for his intervention. Roberts had told the police that the attack had simply “popped into his
head”. He was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and held on $100,000 bail.
Number 8 Charles Lalonde
In the summer of 2018, a video began circulating online of a teenager who was violently thrown out
of a gym in Montreal, Canada, for deadlifting too loudly. On August the 2nd, Charles Lalonde, aged
19, had set up his phone to record himself as he pulled 350 pounds at the Buzzfit center. He was
planning on sending the footage to his trainer, but it ended up showing the altercation instead.
As Lalonde was making his lift attempt, another man, wearing a tank top with the word “animal”
printed on it, aggressively approached him. He stepped on Lalonde’s barbell, and pushed it down,
causing the teenager to abruptly drop the heavy weight. The move could’ve resulted in Lalonde
being seriously injured and, although he wasn’t hurt, the video would show him wincing in the
moments that followed. A heated exchange ensued in which the other man repeatedly told Lalonde
“You’re out!” before pushing him into a wall. The teenager had reportedly been warned by gym
staff in the past about his loud deadlifting and told that he had to place shock-absorbing mats
under the discs if he wanted to continue using the facility. He complied but the other weightlifter,
who wasn’t reported as a Buzzfit worker, took it upon himself to kick him out. The
video of the confrontation went viral in the aftermath and has been viewed over
9 million times on YouTube alone. Staff banned the unnamed aggressor from the gym while Lalonde was
offered a year-long free membership to his “dream gym” in Montreal, SSP Barbell Club.
Number 7 Essex Gym Altercation In November of 2019, a brutal fight
erupted at a fitness center in Essex, England, in which men battered each
other using pieces of fitness equipment. It’s unclear what led to the altercation, which was
captured on video by another gym goer at the Ab Salute gym in Brentwood. The footage
showed a group pinning a man wearing a blue tracksuit against a weight rack and
striking him repeatedly in the head and body with metal bars. In a separate scene of the conflict,
one gym goer raised a detached pull down bar above his head and swung it at a rival involved in the
melee. Perhaps the most shocking moment in the expletive-laden footage was of a man curled up on
the floor in the fetal position and protecting his head with a disc weight as a brawler kicked him in
the back and struck him with a dumbbell bar. None of those involved were identified but a police
report did mention that a man in his late teens suffered bruising and cuts while another, aged 27,
was left with a cut above his eye. Ab Salute described the fight as an isolated incident,
reaffirmed its stance against violence and mentioned that all of the men taking part in
the row were banned for life. Number 6 Blythe Mason-Boyle
In March of 2019, shortly after leaving the Énergie Fitness gym, in Birmigham, England, a
young woman was viciously attacked by a carjacker in his late teens. Blythe Mason-Boyle, aged 24,
had just finished her workout and was heading to her Audi A1, parked on Coventry Road, Sheldon.
Majid Ali approached the woman and, without provocation or warning, struck her in the head
with a hammer. Before Mason-Boyle could regain her composure, he drove off in her vehicle. The victim
suffered cuts to her face and a shattered eye socket which resulted in permanent vision damage.
Photos released by the police would show her with a severely swollen eye, from which
blood poured down to her chest. Mason-Boyle would also need counseling in the aftermath to overcome
the trauma of her ordeal. Local authorities were tipped off and identified Ali as the perpetrator,
locating the Audi within 24 hours of the violent carjacking. The hammer used in the attack was
found hidden underneath a sofa bed, after a warrant was executed at his Sparkhill home.
18-year-old Ali denied charges of robbery, possession of an offensive weapon and wounding
but the police proved he’d been responsible and noted he felt no remorse over the attack.
Ali was found guilty less than a year after the incident and was given a two-year and nine-year
sentence to run concurrently. Number 5 Jaime Antonio Mesa
Roughly five months after he and his girlfriend had broken up, in 2018, Colombian man Jaime
Antonio Mesa kept visiting the same gym as her, in the city of Segovia. Mesa, who worked as a miner,
reportedly hoped they’d reconcile the relationship, which had lasted for about
10 years prior to their separation. Surveillance footage would show them talking on a flight of
stairs. The verbal exchange remained unclear but it devolved into Mesa pouncing on the unnamed
woman and punching her in the face. He dragged her to the ground by her hair whereupon his barrage of
strikes persisted. Mesa then attempted to flee up the stairs but his ex-girlfriend charged after him
and pulled him down, causing the man to fall onto his back on the bottom step. As they struggled
on the gym floor, Mesa once again ended up in top position and continued punching the woman,
with even greater force than in the altercation’s earlier stage. Before leaving the room,
he kicked his ex-girlfriend in the back of the head then flung her across the room by her hair.
According to updates on the matter, the woman was hospitalized in serious but stable condition
while the police had started looking to arrest Mesa but still hadn’t brought him into custody.
Number 4 Incident in Mexico City In February of 2022, a harrowing
surveillance video began circulating online of a woman who suffered a fatal accident at a gym
in Mexico City. The unnamed 42-year-old was shown attempting to squat a barbell that had been loaded
with approximately 400 pounds. The small-framed gym goer lifted the weight, equivalent to that
of a silverback gorilla, off the rack and, for a few seconds, appeared to be in control of it.
She then started a downward motion but her entire body buckled underneath the tremendous weight,
as her daughter and another weightlifter looked on in shock. She slumped to the ground with the
barbell on her neck. Others in the gym rushed to her aid and lifted the weight off her and
the woman collapsed backwards unconscious, with blood pouring from her head. Paramedics from
the Red Cross subsequently pronounced the woman dead at the scene. The Mexico City Office of the
Attorney General launched an investigation into the incident but no further information was made
available to the media, as of early March, 2022. Number 3 Christmas Abbott
TV personality Christmas Abbott narrowly avoided serving a jail sentence following an incident
outside a gym in Tampa, Florida, in August of 2018. Abbott, who a year a prior had finished
third on the 19th season of Big Brother US, had recently found out that Benjamin Bunn, the father
of her child, had been having an affair. The CrossFit star was eight months pregnant at the
time and she drove to the gym, which was owned by Bunn, to confront him and the alleged mistress,
named as Samantha Morse. Upon entering the facility she started screaming at Bunn,
while referring to Morse as a “pathetic home-wrecker”, and threw an ice coffee across
the room. Once outside, she got into her Mercedes Benz SUV and rammed Morse’s car multiple times.
When an officer arrived at the scene, Abbott began crying and confessed to have “lost it” and crashed
her Benz into the car because its owner had been allegedly sleeping with her child’s father. Due to
the advanced state of her pregnancy, the arresting officers didn’t take her into custody but issued a
warrant that would allow Abbott to turn herself in after she gave birth. On October the 8th,
about a month after her son was born, the TV personality faced the legal consequences
of her car-smashing rampage and was charged with felony criminal mischief. Following a
plea agreement, she was sentenced to 12 months’ probation and 25 hours of community service,
ordered to pay $1,357.95 in restitution and complete an anger management class.
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Number 2 Roseville LA Fitness Row In March of 2014 a mass brawl,
the quelling of which required the intervention of local authorities, erupted at an LA Fitness
gym in Roseville, Minnesota. The fighting had reportedly started out on the basketball court
before spilling into the fitness area, where four men had chased another. 10 to 15 men,
some of whom attempted to diffuse the situation, were ultimately involved in the altercation. The
man that the group of four had been chasing was directed by the LA Fitness manager to stay by the
front desk and juice bar. Police Lt. Lorne Rosand told a media outlet that the others then started
throwing two and a half, five and 10-pound weights at the bar and their male target. They also used
barbells and a trash can lid as projectiles in their onslaught. Police officers were successful
in tempering the situation and six men were taken into custody. Three were identified as Minneapolis
residents Ali Yusuf Barre and Abdirashid Yasin Duad, both 18, and Burnsville man Mohamed
Awil Suleiman, aged 20. They were charged with disorderly conduct and participation in a riot.
The LA Fitness location had been plagued with crime in recent years. In 2013, Roseville police
responded to 147 incidents at the gym and, in 2014, officers had already been called two dozen
times in the months leading up to the mass brawl. Number 1 Samuel Kiwasz
On March the 19th, at an Anytime Fitness location in Culver City, California, a man was knocked off
his treadmill after an SUV plowed through the floor-to-ceiling glass window near him. The
victim, Samuel Kiwasz, would later report “It's a miracle that I'm alive”. He’d been warming up
on a treadmill in preparation for a group fitness class. As the Mercedes SUV came crashing through
the window it made contact with Kiwasz’s treadmill and launched him off it, also sending a multitude
of glass shards in his direction. Kiwasz flew back into a door which opened as he hit it, saving him
from further injuries as the treadmills were pushed into the walls by the crashing vehicle.
An employee helped him to his feet, wiping blood from his face and mouth. The female driver of
the SUV, who’d allegedly experienced a failure of the breaks on her vehicle,
also got out to check if Kiwasz was alright but then attempted to leave. She was stopped
from fleeing by an off-duty officer working out at the gym and later interviewed by the authorities.
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