Teenager ‘stabbed guard’ at J-Lo’s Dubai concert
A teenager stabbed a security guard who caught him trying to sneak into a Jennifer Lopez concert last year, a Court of Misdemeanours heard.
At about 10pm on November 17, the Iraqi guard, 36, saw a group of men trying to enter the concert at Atlantis The Palm, Dubai, with fake tickets.
“I was with an Indian colleague and both headed to the location of the men who were trying to sneak in,” the guard said. “When we got there, we asked them to hand in the fake tickets but they refused and attacked us. Suddenly one of them stabbed me in the back, before screaming at his friends telling them to run away, saying: ‘I stabbed him, run’.”
The guard was taken to a first-aid room until police and paramedics arrived. He told police a group of six or seven men started the attack.
“I can’t remember their number exactly but we didn’t insult them or anything, we just asked them for the altered tickets,” he said. “But they started screaming at us, then they hit us with their bare hands before one of them stabbed me.”
Although the location did not have surveillance camera footage, police gained information about the identity of one of the attackers from a ticket left at the scene.
On his arrest, the man tipped off officers about the assailant’s identity. But in court on Monday, the accused Syrian, 19, denied a charge of assaulting the safety of a person. He said he ran away when fighting broke out.
“I didn’t stab him, I didn’t even know he was stabbed,” he said. “I was waiting for a friend who was at the concert and when he came out along with two others, I don’t know, he told me the concert was boring and that we should leave. He then handed me a ticket and, at that moment, the guards came and one of them grabbed my friend’s friend by the neck.”
Court records did not disclose any other arrests. The next hearing is on March 26.