A college lecturer was shoved into a freezing canal by a gang of thugs – allegedly as part of a racist attack because he is white.
Lee Skinner was punched by an unnamed assailant while he was jogging by the water in Birmingham, England.
He described being knocked into the freezing water (pictured above) while the attacker and four friends – whom he described as looking Pakistani – stopped him from climbing out.
Skinner says he escaped by swimming to the other side, then scared the youths away by shouting at them in Arabic, which he knew from a former career as a language teacher.
Skinner recounted the attack – which happened on the afternoon of January 15th – in an interview with the Birmingham Mail local newspaper.
He said:
As I jogged past, the one with a rounded face punched me full force with his left hand, into my right cheek. I went up into the air and into the water. I sank and was completely submerged, my feet were not touching the bottom. I opened my eyes and could see brown muddy swirl around me.
The water was so cold that I couldn’t breathe properly. All I could do was kick my feet to get to the surface.
The one who punched me was waiting at the side of the canal with an incredible look of pleasure on his face. He was waiting to watch me suffer or to come back so he could hit me again.
In a bizarre turn, Skinner says he then pursued the accomplices (the attacker ran off elsewhere) and engaged them in conversation – at which point they admitted he was victimised “because I was white”.
When the news first broke a West Midlands Police spokesman said they tried to find the culprit but had failed to apprehend anybody and were still investigating.
Heat Street has contacted police for an update on the investigation.
