Beaten for calling out racist abuse
A BUSINESSMAN was savagely attacked in Dublin after coming to the defence of a woman who was being racially abused.
Last month, Shane Gillen, who is the director of talent agency Big & Bright, noticed a young man shouting racist insults at a woman on Capel Street in the north city.
As he passed, the 35-year-old from Sligo told him to shut up, which provoked the man and up to ten of his pals to follow him.
Moments later at around 10.30pm, Mr Gillen was being kicked and punched by the gang who he reckons were aged 18 to 40.
‘It all happened very, very quickly,’ he told Joe Duffy on RTÉ’s Liveline. ‘Very quickly I realised I was in trouble, I’m seeing blood... I remember thinking I just need to run; I was in fight-or-flight mode.’
Luckily, Mr Gillen came to a hotel on nearby Mary Street and dashed to the entrance.
‘It felt like forever but it was probably over in moments and I ran for the hotel. As soon as I got into the hotel the staff gathered around me quickly and rang 999. It transpired that an hour earlier the receptionist of the hotel had been subject to a racial verbal attack from the same group.’
Mr Gillen was taken to hospital and had several tests, including an X-ray and CAT scan on his injuries.
He said: ‘I have a fractured orbital bone just below my left eye socket and two breaks in my nose.
‘The orbital bone, the doctor told me, was akin to a fracture he would have seen from a car crash... They were really out to cause damage. It was only in the hospital then that I realised how retrospectively serious it was. The doctor sent a medical report to the guards.’
Over a month on from the incident, Mr Gillen said the culprits have not been found. However, it’s understood gardaí have CCTV footage of the assault and multiple eyewitness accounts.