Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
PHOEBE LAUREN SOPHIE I could see liquid flying through the air. It started eating my skin..
like a can of Coke being opened” as she bent down for her bag.
The liquid hit her a second later and her skin began to “blister, bubble and peel”. She said last night: “I remember the smell and the steam coming off the floor. My neck was stinging so I touched it and my skin came off in my hand. “Looking around, skin was hanging off other people’s faces, that’s when I was sure it was acid.”
The attack has left Lauren, originally from Bournemouth, Dorset, wary of going out. She said. “At first I didn’t think it had affected me but for the first couple of weeks I didn’t leave the house.
“Now if we go out I have to be high up so I can see everything that’s going on in the club. I’m a lot more anxious... I’m always checking over my shoulder.
“If someone spills a drink or something I’m scared of what it is. It flashes back to that moment. Just because others can’t see the scars as much doesn’t mean they are not there. We have to look at those burns every day.”
Lauren, who works in recruitment, added: “I really wish I could ask [Collins] what he would do if someone threw acid at someone he knew – his family or his friends – in a nightclub.
“I’m pretty sure he would want them to go to jail for life. He would want someone to pay the price for it... What could you say to someone who has thrown acid at you?
“There are no words. I don’t class them as a human being.
“I want the sentence not just for me but for all the other girls having heard what they had to go through, how some of them are so depressed they can’t get out of bed in the morning.”
Lauren posed for photos with friend Sophie Hall before they went out on the night of the attack. Describing her agony, Sophie said previously: “There was panic and shouting and I just started crying because my face felt as if it was on fire.
“The acid had run down my cheeks and burnt into my skin. I was hysterical.”
The Borough Commander for Hackney, Det Chief Supt Simon Laurence, said: “It was a barbaric and cowardly attack.
“I don’t understand how a human being could do that to others.”
Collins went on the run after the attack. He was found living in a house that was being renovated 60 miles away from his home in Broxbourne, Herts.
He jumped from a bathroom window in just a T-shirt and his pants as he tried to flee when police arrived.
Collins refused to answer any questions and only put forward a defence after finding out he had been caught on the club’s crystal clear CCTV. Having studied