Management at a Moray bowling alley moved quickly to defend the actions of their staff after a brawl on Saturday evening.
Three police units were called to Pinz Bowling in Elgin where they made two arrests.
No serious injuries were reported after fighting had broken out at the popular family attraction – however, there were mixed views on how the incident was handled by security staff at the alley.
Managing directors Darren Margach and David Anderson posted on the Pinz social media site on Sunday to reassure customers that their safety was uppermost, saying: “It has come to our attention that there may be some bad press about Pinz flying around Facebook this morning.
“Last night unfortunately we had a particularly bad incident of crime occur on premises. The culprits were dealt with by Police Scotland who can only be highly commended for their work.
“The rest of the group were also asked to leave which I believe is where the problem is with the bad press this morning.
“We are first and foremost a family entertainment centre, we will not tolerate this type of behaviour from any group, we do not have a reputation for crime here, and we do not intend to get one which is why these steps were taken last night.
“We work in constant partnership with local security firm Moray Security to maintain our safe environment at Pinz.”
However, customers who witnessed Saturday’s scenes were critical of the action taken by security staff at the bowling alley, with Natalie Addicoat commenting: “I will be having words with police myself – our safety was never taken into consideration.
“I never seen these men in my life, they abused my family and ruined our night and you did nothing for us at all.
“You took everyone out but yet left a 12-year-old in the middle of it and my niece got punched in the face and was very upset – it was not good enough.”
Another customer, Jayde Maria Payne, said: “There were little kids that saw this fight and could have easily been hurt. All the staff sat there and watched and asked us to leave 30 minutes after everything calmed down.
“A lot more could have been done but you chose not to! If you had of taken the lad out when asked none of this would have happened!”