I can’t even think of anything snarky to say (actually I could, and I have, but in this case it just doesn’t fit,) because this is totally messed up.
As far as I can tell, the worst thing about it is that there are no witnesses that came forward yet and no one who stepped in to stop what seems like a pretty one-sided beating (resisting urge to comment on engineers getting beat up). Sure it’s shady that the annoying people weren’t removed from the theater when they started causing trouble earlier in the screening, but that’s pretty much the expected service level at most movie theaters. One thing that piqued my interest, “[the parents] had arrived late for the showing on Saturday night and began drinking cans of lager.” Either movie theatres (w00t! British spellling) in the UK are just way cooler than in the US, or the place was a frickin’ dive. I’m tending to think towards the latter.
(look up Social Psychology junk, groups helping people, tangential: response to authority, etc.)