The man allegedly screamed, “You Jews run away from here before I kill you” at school girls inside a Hackney Kosher food shop while holding a meat cleaver.
.@MPSHackney@Shomrim#Clapton footage from the person threatening jews with a meat cleaver and large knife pic.twitter.com/gzidLgxMo1
— London 999 Feed (@999London) May 9, 2017
Previously he reportedly tried to burst into another store but became enraged when he found it locked. He then entered the second shop, allegedly saying: “Where is the boss, I will kill him.”
When he was told the owner was not in, he ran towards two girls aged eight and 14.
The man was then witnessed running to a block of flats, but local volunteers from the Stamford Hill Shomrim, the local neighborhood watch patrol, circled the area until Metropolitan Police officers arrived.
The suspect was arrested by armed police later in the day.
“Police were called at 16:06hrs on Tuesday, 9 May, to a man armed with two knives who had threatened a shopkeeper in Upper Clapton Road, E5,” a Met spokesman said.
“Officers attended the location, and detained a man nearby at an address in Rossington Street. He was arrested on suspicion of affray and possession of an offensive weapon, and taken to a north London police station where he remains in custody.”
The attack is being treated as anti-Semitism, with campaigners calling the incident “extremely frightening.”
“It is very fortunate that there are no injuries reported,” said Campaign Against Antisemitism chairman Gideon Falter.
“We commend Stamford Hill Shomrim and the Metropolitan Police Service for their bravery in rushing to the scene to protect the public.”
No one was hurt in the incident.
The neighborhood of Stamford Hill has been the target of other recent anti-Semitic attacks, with a series of cars parked next to a local school being sprayed with Nazi graffiti last November.
