http://youtu.be/G2NsGAsbQlQ
The 16-year-old victim of a brutal street attack said last night that she hoped to be the last victim of the stranger who knocked her unconscious.
The teenage student, who collapsed to the pavement after one powerful punch in Plaistow, east London, explained she wanted the thug to be caught so that he could not injure anybody else.
She said she had “no idea” what was about to happen when he ran up behind her in broad daylight as she walked to college and viciously swung at her. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the teenager said that “the next thing she knew”, she was waking up in an ambulance taking her to hospital.
“It was really bad,” she told ITV’s London Tonight, dressed conservatively in a black belted coat and headscarf. “I had a migraine, my chin was grazed and sore, my teeth were hurting because they were chipped and I couldn’t talk. I hope he does get caught so he doesn’t do it again to another person. I hope I am his last victim.”
The girl said she had seen a man looking at her when she had briefly gone back into her house to get the mobile phone she had left behind. It appears that he then followed her down Plaistow High Street and savagely attacked her just 500m from her home, outside the Black Lion pub.
She admitted she is scared to walk down the street alone since the vicious beating last Tuesday.
The shocking CCTV footage was circulated by police yesterday in an effort to find the man responsible, with the girl’s face blurred to protect her identity.
Update: See “Man arrested after east London attack on teenager”, Press Association, 22 November 2012