Ryanair racist is unmasked
Passenger filmed hurling insults at Windrush gran is named as retired Birmingham railway announcer
THE identity of a passenger who racially abused a black grandmother on a Ryanair plane was revealed last night.
David Mesher was named by his neighbours and a former work colleague as the man at the centre of the shocking tirade.
Last night Mesher, 70, hid behind the front door of his sheltered accommodation flat in Yardley Wood, Birmingham, when confronted by a reporter.
He refused to apologise for his vile rant at 77-year-old Delsie Gayle and said: ‘Go away, there’s nothing to say.’
The former railway announcer was filmed by a fellow passenger racially abusing Mrs Gayle, a member of the Windrush generation of migrants to the UK. In the video, Ryanair staff can be seen failing to intervene as he calls Mrs Gayle a ‘ black b******’ and an ‘ugly f****** c***’.
The incident happened last Friday in Spain, on a plane bound for the UK, after Mrs Gayle’s family had taken her on a trip to the Costa Brava to lift her mood before the first anniversary of her husband Austin’s death.
Neighbours at Mesher’s sheltered accommodation told Mail Online they were appalled by his tirade.
One man said: ‘He is a racist pig and bully and everyone here recognises his face from the TV news and papers. What he did was totally out of order and he should be punished. I can’t imagine he
‘He should be charged’
would have behaved that way to that lady if a man had been present with her.’
His next-door neighbour said Mesher, who lives alone in the flat, was ‘a weirdo and a real nuisance’.
He added: ‘No one really likes him. He keeps himself to himself and we don’t know much about him but we all knew he was going off to Spain on holiday.’
Until his retirement, Mesher worked as a train announcer for British Midland Railways and he also worked as an announcer at Snow Hill Station in Birmingham for Central Trains.
He had previously worked at Waterloo Station in London in the main ticket office as an employee of British Rail.
Before moving to Birmingham, Mesher lived with his elderly mother in Barking, east London, until her death. A former colleague told Mail Online he was stunned to recognise Mesher in the video.
The colleague said: ‘It is 30 years since I last worked with David and he was not like the person you see on the video.
‘He was in the ticket office at Waterloo station and was always so polite. He would not be rude to anyone.
‘It was a real shock to see him and the vile language that he used. He should be condemned for that. It was awful. That isn’t the David Mesher I remember.’ British police said yesterday that they have identified the passenger. But – to the fury of her family – officers have not arrested him because he was outside British jurisdiction at the time. Instead Essex Police, which is handling UK inquiries, has passed his details to police in Spain.
MPs have warned that he is likely to ‘get away scot free’ because of the budget airline’s failure to throw him off the aircraft as it sat on the tarmac in Barcelona before flying to Stansted airport in Essex. The fact that it had not taken off for the UK means it was outside British jurisdiction.
Essex Police contacted the Gayle family on Monday and is to take a statement from Mrs Gayle, of Leyton, east London.
Yesterday, the force said that it had identified the attacker and passed this information to the Spanish authorities. In a moving interview with ITV News, Mrs Gayle described how the incident has sent her into a spiral of depression.
A close friend of Mrs Gayle’s family said they were furious that the man has still not been arrested.
Mrs Gayle’s daughter, Carol, 53, led calls for a prosecution yesterday. Speaking to ITV’s This Morning, she said: ‘He should be charged for racial abuse. Definitely.’