ATLANTA — Police are looking for the people responsible for a New Year's Day brawl that happened at an Atlanta lounge and ended with seven people being stabbed.
What started as a celebration meant to ring in the New Year at Republic Lounge took a violent turn around 3 a.m. officials said.
A witness described scenes of rising chaos to the point where several people were stabbed and police were called. Police said that of the seven who were stabbed, only three were willing to cooperate. Those victims told officers that the stabbings stemmed from a fight between two groups.
It's just the latest example of club violence in Atlanta and came roughly 24-hours after another case in the city at Club Allure. Police said that, in this case, several dozen rounds of gunfire were reported.
"When the nightclubs are closed in Chicago, people are coming to Atlanta to party," Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said during a recent public safety meeting.
Bottoms said the spike in Atlanta's violent crime in and around bars and nightclubs could be the result of Georgia being open for business while other states remain closed.
"Not a lot that we can do about that locally because the governor has made the decision to keep the state open," she said. "But that seems to be contributing to what we're seeing in and around our bars and nightclubs."
In recent months, Atlanta nightclub shootings have even proven deadly. In November, Chicago rapper King Von was killed outside the Monaco Hookah Lounge in Downtown.
And a 25-year-old Marine was shot and killed outside the Up Lounge in Midtown.
Investigators said that, when it comes to the brawl inside Republic Lounge, they're still working to track down suspects and hope anyone with information will call Crime Stoppers.