Exposed: The traveller campaign threatening Britain’s pubs. Why an ‘anti-racism’ campaign is being branded the biggest threat to the hospitality industry since Covid
At 2pm on Sunday, a teenage boy walked into Theo’s, a cafe next to a park in Uxbridge, grabbed two bottles of Lucozade from the fridge and approached the till.
After handing over a handful of coins, he pulled a metal canister from his pocket and sprayed its contents into the face of the cafe’s female owner. Then he sprinted out of the door and disappeared.
Emergency services were called and paramedics spent an hour treating the terrified woman, a 27-year-old mother of one.
‘Her eyes immediately became red and swollen,’ recalls her partner, Erhan Sahin, 36.
‘They washed them out with fluid. We don’t know what was in the can, but it smelled a bit like spray paint, and the stuff they used to treat her is the same as they use in acid attacks.’
Police took forensic samples away for testing and began searching the area for the mystery attacker, who had been wearing a black baseball cap.
Three hours later, they found a youth who matched his description and carried out an arrest. But then this already sinister series of events took a chilling turn.
As the suspect was being detained outside Theo’s, a man who identified himself as the boy’s father appeared. According to Erhan Sahin, he proceeded to make a bizarre effort to justify the attack.
‘The guy was pointing at the cafe and telling the police that the family who run this place are racists,’ Sahin tells me.
‘He kept saying, “look at the videos online!” and telling the cops, “these people got what they deserved, they are racists, it’s all over Facebook”.’
The incident – over which the Metropolitan Police tell me ‘a 14-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of assault occasioning actual bodily harm’ – marked the culmination of a deeply traumatic 18 months for Erhan and his partner, who remains so shaken that she has asked not to be named.
It has not only seen their young family subjected to an appalling campaign of abuse, both via social media and in person, but now represents an existential threat to their livelihood.
‘We’ve had so many death threats, I must have ten different crime numbers from reporting them. My missus has been shouted at in the street. It’s been hell. They have targeted my disabled in-laws, and my four-year-old son. The level of hate, you wouldn’t believe.’
To understand what exactly has been going on, we must walk 500 yards up the road from Theo’s Cafe to the couple’s other business, a flat-roofed pub named The Three Steps. It was here, at around 6.40pm on October 18, 2023, that a man named John Reilly walked up to the bar.
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Travellers invaded Tesco car park then went on rampage: Group pitched up caravans then harassed shoppers, stole food and tried to get into cars before thieving from Currys and Wickes
A marauding gang of travellers who invaded a Tesco car park went on a rampage, harassing shoppers, stealing food from trollies and trying to raid cars.
The large group ‘ran riot’ after setting up camp outside the superstore in the coastal town of Littlehampton, West Sussex, it has been claimed.
They arrived after being booted out of a nearby park five minutes down the road on Wednesday, with aerial pictures showing 19 caravans occupying a large space of the retail park, in Broad Piece.
Horrified locals say the travellers have caused mayhem since descending upon the area, creating a ‘very unpleasant, threatening atmosphere’.
Groups allegedly trashed a fridge in the nearby Currys, stole items from there and the neighbouring Wickes store and snatched food from trolleys.
Sickening pictures, seen by MailOnline, even appear to show a person defecating in the middle of the car park.
While other residents have claimed the travellers were seen leaping into ‘people’s gardens’ on a new housing estate backing off the A259.
Speaking to MailOnline, one elderly man said: ‘It was as if they had organised it on purpose – to descend on the retail park in numbers to cause the maximum amount of chaos.
Read More: Travellers invaded Tesco car park then went on rampage
