GUILDERLAND — When a fighting crowd dispersed from a Crossgates Mall parking lot on Saturday night, Guilderland Police found a 14-year-old boy standing on the sidewalk in front of the Standard Restaurant — with stab wounds to his buttocks.

He was taken by the Guilderland Emergency Medical Services to Albany Medical Center where he was treated for the wounds, which weren’t life-threatening, Curtis Cox, deputy chief of the Guilderland Police, told The Enterprise.

A Guilderland officer called in the fight at 9:13 p.m., Cox said, and the crowd of 30 to 40 people had dispersed by the time more officers arrived just one minute later. 

“They just run off,” said Cox, when asked where the crowd had gone so quickly.

“I don’t know what the fight was about,” said Cox when asked. He said no arrests have been made and the incident is still under investigation.

Anyone who witnessed the fight is asked to call the department’s non-emergency number: 518-356-1501.

Before the pandemic and the resulting shut-down and later reopening of the mall, Crossgates had experienced several violent incidents.

Since the pandemic, Cox said this week, “It’s been pretty quiet.”

In December 2019, a brawl at the mall’s Beef Jerky Outlet left one person with minor injuries.

In August 2019, two Guilderland officers suffered minor injuries when they tried to break up a fight between several females at Get Air Trampoline Park. Two juvenile males were arrested and charged with second-degree assault, a felony, and with resisting arrest and criminal trespass, both misdemeanors. 

Cox told The Enterprise in 2018 that disruptive groups of shoplifters were a new trend in crimes at the mall. In these incidents, he said, a group causes a disruption in one part of the store — yelling and screaming, for instance, or throwing racks of clothes on the floor — while someone else commits a larceny elsewhere in the store. 

In November 2016, a gun was fired in Crossgates Mall, causing panicked shoppers to flee and resulting in a lockdown while police searched the premises. Tasheem Maeweather was acquitted of several charges including possessing a firearm, in the incident, but convicted of reckless endangerment. The prosecution in the case said the shooting was gang-related.