Hockey mom on the ice speaks out

LYNN, Mass. (WHDH) -- On June 1, at a rink in Marlboro, Gina O’Toole made headlines when she walked onto the ice and demanded someone break up a fight during a youth hockey game. Monday, she spoke out about it.

Some people in the crowd supported her - but others didn’t like that fact that she went out there to discipline the referee.

“The fight just got bigger and kept lasting longer and longer and before I knew it I was open opening the gate. I was on the ice and I said, ‘hey, you know, you need to get control of this game.’ He turned around, looked at me and said, ‘get off the ice.’ I said, ‘you need to do your job, you need to control this game.’ He screamed at me again, ‘get off the ice.’ I turned around, ‘got off the ice.’ I didn't get kicked out of the rink.”

Her son Mark, number 14, plays for the Boston Raptors in white. O’Toole said the other team started the fight.

After the incident, O’Toole called her husband - a Lynn police captain - and told him to get down to the rink to watch the second game in that tournament because she was too upset to stay.

O’Toole said she doesn’t know what gave her the guts to march out onto the ice, “I don't know. I don't know. It probably ran across a few parents minds that were standing there. I just did it. Sometimes I do that. I act sometimes without thinking.”

The family returned home today from a trip to New York for a network interview. Her son Mark didn’t want to speak.

What was Mark's reaction to Mom out on the ice?

O’Toole thought her son would be upset, “Someone said, ‘Someone's mom went on the ice.’ And my son said, ‘Oh my goodness,’ he said, ‘did she have on a pink coat.’ And they said, ‘yes, she did,’ and somehow he knew. He said, ‘I'm grounded she will be so mad at me.’

He wasn’t mad at her; O’Toole said the kids thought it was really funny.

The family is back from New York now and happy to be home.