Horrific CCTV video shows man punching, knocking out 18-year-old girl after she told him she was 'not interested' in him
Warning: Distressing content
Dramatic CCTV footage shows the horrific moment a teenage college student was knocked out on the street after rejecting a man.
"I'm sorry, I'm not interested," Gabrielle Walsh, 18, told a man who was following her during a night out. She had merely finished speaking when the man brutally attacked her.
The incident took place in central Manchester on Saturday, July 13 at 3 am, when three men followed her and her friend Kyle McKeown, also 18, from a club named Club Bloom.
As the two girls were walking, the footage shows they are approached by the three men and the situation suddenly turned violent. The man is then seen punching Walsh. McKeown is also attacked and falls to the ground. Bystanders rush to help the two girls as the three men flee the scene.
The men had consistently pushed to talk to the girls but they didn't want to and, in an attempt to get the men to go away, Gabrielle told them, "I'm sorry, I'm not interested".
"They kept harassing us. I was saying to [my friend] Kyle: 'Let's go'. Then he hit me—he fully knocked me out," Walsh said. "When I woke up I was on the floor and the three of them had jumped on Kyle as well. "I went back to the eye hospital today and they said I've got a blood clot on my eye. It still can't really see out of it, when I open my eye all I see is yellow," she said. Her injuries consist of a severely swollen, purple eye.
"I'm not a rude person, I just said 'Sorry, I'm not interested'," said Walsh, adding that it would have wounded ego or two. "I think it was a jealousy, ego thing because I rejected him in front of his friends. Girls feel like they can't say no. They feel like if they say no then they might hurt you and in this case it was true. It's scared me, I'm scared to go out, I've always got to be with somebody," she said.
The footage has been released by the police in an attempt to help identify the attackers.
Senior Investigating Officer, Constable Ben Lomax, from GMP's City Centre Division called the attack cowardly and said, "Clearly, there were numerous people who not only witnessed this attack but will have seen the three men hastily departing the scene shortly afterward. Imagine if you or a member of your family was subjected to this kind of violence? You would quite rightly hope the perpetrators are caught."
The attacker is described as white, around 5ft 8in tall, and was wearing a pink t-shirt.
Lomax has asked for information regarding the men and said that the public try to identify them with the help of the clothes they were wearing, or their "distinctive way of running".
"Perhaps you saw three people like this earlier on during that evening, or later in the night. If you know something, please get in touch as soon as possible," he said.