Philadelphia Flyers Gritty Mascot accused of punching 13-year-old boy

Gritty, the gleefully deranged mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers, is known for being a little rough around the edges. After getting a confused response when he made his debut in 2018, the shaggy orange creature soon cemented his status as a beloved avatar of “pure anarchy and chaos”p by attacking fans with a T-shirt cannon, tossing a combative child in the penalty box, and generally wreaking havoc.

‘When everything is bad in the world, Gritty is good’: A Philadelphia love story

But one Philadelphia sports fan claims that the mascot took things too far by punching his 13-year-old at a meet-and-greet event. Chris Greenwell, 46, told the News Journal that after posing for a photo on Nov. 19, his son, Brandon, tapped Gritty on the head three times, intending it to be a playful gesture.

“Two seconds later, he lunged toward my son from about eight to 10 feet away and punched him in the back,” Greenwell told the paper.

The Flyers say they’ve found no evidence to support the claims, which became public on Wednesday and inspired fans to rush to the mascot’s defense as #FreeGritty began trending on Twitter. Meanwhile, Greenwell has pledged to give up his season tickets after more than two decades, though the dispute didn’t stop him from attending a game this weekend.

“I’ve lost a lot of respect for the team that I’ve loved for so long,” he told NBC 10 Philadelphia.

Greenwell told local media outlets that he took Brandon to be treated by a chiropractor a week after the incident. According to documents that he provided to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the boy reported mild back pain and was diagnosed with “contusion to lower thoracic spine with subluxation,” also known as a bruise.

As the Inquirer first reported, Greenwell filed a police report on Dec. 21, more than a month after the meet-and-greet. Though he told the paper that he hadn’t hired a lawyer, he later told NBC 10 Philadelphia that it was “too early” to say if he would take legal action against the Flyers.

The investigation into the alleged assault is “active and ongoing,” officials said. But although a human was presumably inside the mascot suit, the statement from the Philadelphia Police Department referred to the alleged assailant only as “Flyers mascot Gritty.”

The Flyers and their corporate owner, Comcast Spectacor, looked into the claim that Gritty had punched a child, but said they couldn’t find any corroborating witnesses even though dozens of fans attended the event, according to emails that Greenwell shared with the Inquirer. They also said that none of the cameras in the Wells Fargo Center had captured the incident, since all were “focused on other locations.”

“We took Mr. Greenwell’s allegations seriously and conducted a thorough investigation that found nothing to support this claim,” the Flyers said in a Wednesday statement to local media outlets.

Greenwell told the News Journal that he waited several weeks to contact the police because he first wanted to give the Comcast Spectacor the opportunity to make things right. “All I wanted them to do was give my son an apology,” he said. “I wanted his medical bills paid, a couple hundred bucks, and for them do something special to make up for it … I wasn’t asking for anything else.”

According to the Inquirer, Greenwell began his first email to Comcast Spectacor by complaining that he ended up with a “lousy picture” because Gritty wasn’t looking directly at the camera. He then went on to say that he knew his son’s behavior was wrong, but the mascot’s aggressive response had been “unprofessional.”

The team did try to make amends. “It is unfortunate that you and your son had a bad experience at our Gritty Photo Event,” Laurie Kleinman, Spectacor’s vice president of risk management, wrote in a December email, according to the Inquirer. “Therefore, we are offering an opportunity to discuss a creative way to restore your son’s love of the Philadelphia Flyers.”

proposed that the Flyers show his son on the scoreboard or let him mingle with players in the locker room, the company suggested that Brandon sit on the bench during warm-ups, the Inquirer reported. The negotiations went downhill after Greenwell insisted that Kleinman had told him in a phone conversation that Gritty admitted to hitting his son, which Kleinman vehemently denied.

“Gritty, however, recalls being hit on the head repeatedly by someone during one of the earlier photo shoots,” she wrote, according to the Inquirer.

After 42 years without a mascot, the Philadelphia Flyers debuted Gritty in 2018. The team had no idea what would happen next. (Video: Allie Caren, Sarah Hashemi/Photo: Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)

Given that Philadelphia sports enthusiasts have a reputation for unruly behavior, it was perhaps inevitable that Gritty’s army of fans would take his side in the dispute. In Facebook groups with names like Gritty Memes for Philly Teens, Gritty Gritty Bang Bang and Flyers Nation, the overriding consensus was that Gritty was innocent and hadn’t punched the 13-year-old — and even if he had, there wasn’t anything wrong with that.

“I’ve never wanted to be called in for jury duty more in my life,” one fan tweeted. “#FREEGRITTY.”

Another wrote, “Assaulting a 13 year old is a staple in Philadelphia mascots. Gritty did nothing wrong!”

As the Inquirer reported, it isn’t the first time Philadelphia mascots have faced accusations of violence. A 2002 study in the Cardozo Law Review found that the Phillie Phanatic, a large green creature who for some reason cheers on the city’s baseball team, was “the most-sued mascot in the majors,” possibly because of his “ungainly” costume. One 75-year-old woman claimed that the Phanatic had triggered her arthritis by climbing over her knees, the paper found, while another baseball fan accused the mascot of hugging too hard.

But Bob Jarvis, the Nova Southeastern University professor who conducted the study, told the Inquirer that he didn’t think the Phillies should rein in the Phanatic’s famously weird antics.

“If you have a good mascot he’s worth a lot to you as a team because he’s the face of the team even when the team isn’t playing well," he said.

Philadelphia police are investigating whether the Flyers mascot, Gritty, assaulted a 13-year-old boy.

Chris Greenwell claims that Gritty punched his son in the back “as hard as he could” during an exclusive event for season ticket holders in November. He went to the police after he was unable to come to an agreement about the incident with the Flyers owner Comcast Spectacor.

"I asked for an apology. I asked for an investigation of why this happened, what was behind it. Maybe Gritty was having a bad day? I don't know," said Greenwell.

The Flyers organization issued a statement saying they “conducted a thorough investigation that found nothing to support this claim."