Two sent to hospital after beach melee near Santa Monica Pier

Two people were taken to hospitals with minor injuries Saturday afternoon after a melee that broke out on the beach just north of the Santa Monica Pier, officials said.

Santa Monica Police Watch Commander David Hodgson said five people were in custody — although none had yet been charged with any crimes — after a “mutual combat situation� on the sand down by the waterline near Lifeguard Tower 14.

“Two groups started getting into it with each other,� he said. �They get into this big altercation.�

Police responded and found one person with a non-life-threatening injury consistent with a stab wound. Another person had what appeared to be a broken ankle. Both were taken to hospitals.

Five males were arrested, three in connection with charges of assault with a deadly weapon, one for battery, and one for sexual battery, according to a police department social media post. The incident is still under investigation. Police, Hodgson said, are “still trying to sort through what happened.�

He stressed that there is no threat to the public.

The incident comes about a month after two German tourists were stabbed and a third person injured in apparently unprovoked attacks near the Santa Monica Pier in late May. In that case, a suspect was apprehended.

And on June 26, a Santa Monica man allegedly attacked three women at the beach north of the pier, attempting to strangle a 17-year-old, then assaulting and biting a woman who tried to come to her aid, and allegedly dragging a 72-year-old woman into the ocean and pushing her underwater. That man, Jawann Dwayne Garnett, 32, is being held without bail, charged with two counts of attempted murder.