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 Cllr Russell Eagling |
Town Hall chief in gang beating
Lib Dem is third councillor to be mugged
A LIB Dem councillor has spoken of his shock after being punched and bitten by a group of teenagers for his mobile phone.
Councillor Russell Eagling, who chairs the Town Hall’s culture and environment scrutiny committee, was attacked by the group of 15-year-olds in Well Walk in Hampstead on Sunday evening as he was on his way to meet a friend for dinner in Heath Street.
It is the third assault on a councillor in less than a year, following the mugging of Lib Dem councillor Fred Carver last May and an attack on Conservative councillor Keith Sedgwick on his Gospel Oak estate in February.
Cllr Eagling, who was elected last May to represent Fortune Green Ward, was yards away from his home in Christchurch Hill when the attack happened. He had just finished a phone conversation with a friend when he found himself cornered by around five members of the group.
He said: “I still had the mobile phone in my hand and I noticed that they had come up behind me and I was blocked in. They were raining down punches on my head but I hadn’t let go of the phone. One of them bit me on the hand to release the phone and then they grabbed it and ran off.”
A shell-shocked and bleeding Cllr Eagling flagged down a passing car and called the police, who arrived in minutes and took him to Kentish Town police station. Police officers interviewed Cllr Eagling and swabbed the bite for DNA before sending him to the Royal Free for a check-up.
Cllr Eagling, who returned to his job as a web manager for liberal think tank Centre Forum in Victoria on Tuesday, said the recent assaults on him and his fellow councillors reflected the high number of such attacks on younger men.
He said: “I am 29 and I am the oldest of six councillors in their 20s. I think these attacks reflect what is happening in society – the majority of victims of crimes like these tend to be younger men”.
Cllr Eagling added that the assault had reinforced his conviction that society “should not tolerate any level of crime”.
He said: “There has been a suggestion that there has been a flattening rate of crime after a couple of years of downturn and that is acceptable. There are many victims of crime who don’t find any level of crime acceptable. It is our job as a community to fight it”.
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