He lit the £20 note and said: ‘I’ll give you change ... I’ve changed it into fire’
Anger at Tory student prank
THE HOMELESS man who was taunted by a student with a burning £20 note has revealed his cruel joke.
Fellow Cambridge University students are calling for Ronald Coyne, 18, to be permanently expelled for his prank.
Victim Ryan Davies, 31, said last night: “It was absolutely disgusting. It was horrible. Just plain nasty.”
The unemployed crane operator claims he asked Coyne for some spare change as he passed in a group in the early hours.
He said: “I was polite about it as I always am. He says, ‘Let’s see what I’ve got’ and pulls out a £20 note and went to pass it to me. I couldn’t believe my luck.
“But then he pulled it back and lit it and said, ‘I’ll give you some change, I’ve changed it into fire’.”
Street sleepers in the historic city – where temperatures fell to minus 4C with windchill last night – want him to brave a night out in the cold with them.
Jenny, 35, who lives on cardboard boxes in an alley nearby, said: “I want to say to him, ‘Come and walk a mile in our shoes’. He wouldn’t survive one night.”
A Snapchat video shows Coyne, wearing a bow-tie and tails, setting fire to the note in the early hours of February 2.
He was communications officer at the Cambridge University Conservative Association, but has been thrown out.
A petition to expel him from Pembroke College had 3,000 signatures last night.
As snow fell, homeless Jenny told the Mirror: “For us, £20 is a room for the night - that little piece of paper means a bed, a shower, food.
“But it obviously means nothing to this student, that’s why he laughed while it burned. We don’t want an apology, just come to experience what we live through.” David Townsend, 36, one of the 144 homeless people in Cambridge, said: “He should sit on the streets for one night and see what it’s like. Jay, 37, added: “He’s obviously got issues to do something like that to another human being.” Coyne’s mother, Sandra McLaughlin, 46, of Livingston, West Lothian, said: “I don’t really know why he’s done something so thoughtless and cruel. It’s completely out of character. We’re just a normal family. We’re not toffs, he’s not a toff.”
Law student Coyne, who has not commented, is believed to have scurried home after the video emerged.
A Cambridge University spokeswoman said: “We expect our students to treat others with respect and take allegations of unacceptable behaviour very seriously.”