so a few weeks ago i was out with some friends and a random guy started on us, going around threatening us and hitting us in a couple of our faces. not hard enough to do any damage, but hard enough to hurt, and with the clear threat of more violence. after a while the guy started focussing on one of our friends who was most firmly telling him to stop and this escalated with the stranger goading my friend until my friend hit him very hard in the face, drawing blood and such. then they grappled for a while, then the police turned up and arrested the stranger.

all this is probably on cctv

anyway, today i'm supposed to go into the police station to give a statement.

my question is: is there any chance that my friend will get into any trouble, as he was the first person in the situation to actually properly harm anyone, rather than threatening and screaming and hitting-not-very-hard? (actually he really fucked up my hand before this, but i have no idea whatsoever how that actually happened)

as im sure some people know, yes this involves other DiSers, and i'm sorry if any of them would prefer that this wasn't talked about, but the police want me at the station tonight and i have to decide whether to give a statement or not, and this does seem like there's the tiniest chance that this could all go horribly wrong. anyway, could we keep names out of this please (apart from zcapx42 who is a ppoliceman so clearly very useful for this thread. he wasnt involved)?

subquestion: even if i do give a statement, what's the actual outcome going to be? will the guy just get fined or what?