Monday night in Ealing was crazy and even a bit scary.
Here is a timeline of our evening:
18:15 - Return from work... just a typical Monday.
18:20 - I skype with my parents. When Mam asks me if we were affected by the riots, I explain that we are in a quiet street overlooking a park, somewhat removed from the High street where the shopping center and shops are... nothing would ever happen here!
19:00 - We eat a delicious dinner, courtesy of Leigh-Anne and the crock pot, consisting of free-range beef & chorizo meatballs slow-cooked with cabbage.
20:00 - We decide to go to the store (about 1/4 mile away) to pick up some yogurt for dessert. As we are walking towards the store absorbed in conversation, we both realize that a group of guys is gathering at the end of the park. There are somewhere between 20 and 30 of them, putting on hoods and face masks. We continue walking to the store, trying to act nonchalant, as turning around to go home would have been strange behavior and may have gotten their attention since we were the people closest to them. We walk around the corner, noticing that the group of masked guys is behind us and also heading this way. In hindsight, it makes sense that they would be going towards the shopping center, but we had no idea at the time. We walk past two police officers who are talking to 3 teenagers about something completely unrelated. As we get to the store entrance, we notice that a guy is standing by the gate readying to bring down the metal curtain. Something was not quite right since the shopping center did not close for another 2 hours. Getting a little nervous at this point, we decide to skip the store, go around the block and head home. We turn the corner and walk for about 30 feet, when we hear screaming behind us as the two police officers run past us as fast as they can, with one of them screaming in the radio "Bravo.. do you hear me... large group of masked men running at us..." They lock themselves into a store, apparently waiting for back-up. At that point, we continue heading home, shaken up and having no idea what is going on. As we are walking home, about 10 of the masked guys run/walk past us, one of them smashing the phone booth right next to us. We sit on the closest bench to wait for a few minutes as police sirens started going off in every direction.
20:30 - We get home, feeling relieved, as the entire experience was a bit surreal and completely unexpected on an innocent errand to get yogurt. We expected that everything was over since there were now police cars and assumed the situation was under control. As it turned out, we could not have been any more wrong.
21:30 - As we keep on looking out the window, we keep seeing large groups of masked people with cricket bats, bottles, bricks, etc... We see no police presence whatsoever from our home, but have no idea what is happening right down the road at our stores. We watch guys throwing bricks through car windows on the street in front of the driveway, and others beating cars with bats.
22:30 - A group of 4 guys walks up the driveway, eying our neighbors' cars. They eventually walk off without causing any damage. The experience was still unpleasant.
23:30 - It appears a car was set on fire on the street. At this point, our neighbors are outside on the driveway and there are less people in the street. We join our neighbors and spend the next 2 hours watching a beautiful metallic silver convertible CLK230 burn down to the ground. The fire department was called but never showed up, understandably since the corner grocery store had been set on fire (the building is now condemned).
Here are a few pictures of before and after:
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| The CLK the next morning (photo credit: a local reporter) |
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| Our normally quaint and pleasant little town square (photo credit: a local reporter) |
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| While the clean-up effort after the looting was extremely efficient and impressive, all the stores are still boarded up. The scaffolds at the far right are around the local grocery store that was set on fire, the building condemned. |
For more coverage and pictures, this link covers what happened around here pretty well and with pictures:
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/871811-ealing-riots-a-timeline-of-the-violence-and-looting
By the way, the last two nights were quiet and there is not much more to loot as you can see, so we're hoping it's over!
