Five Met Police officers have appeared in court charged with affray after their Christmas party allegedly ended in a fight.
Kellsey Millar, 32, Jack Sparkes, 34, Max Michaels-Dubois, 33, Daniel Dean, 38, and Alex Fackerell, 31, had been drinking heavily before boarding a river boat for their Christmas party on December 1, 2023 and heading towards the Southbank when it later docked.
The Times has reported that Inner London Crown Court heard that Fackerell got into a fight with a group of Romanian men where he was hit with a bottle, kicked, and stamped on, which left him with his 'head busted open'.
While he was being treated at Las Iguanas restaurant, a separate group of Romanians asked him if he was okay. His colleagues allegedly became 'aggressive' and began fighting them.
CCTV footage of the incident showed it lasted three-and-a-half minutes as some of the male defendants allegedly threw punches and pushed a man, while Millar allegedly grabbed a female security guard and 'kneed her in her left thigh' when she was blocked from entering the restaurant.
Millar, Sparkes, Michaels-Dubois, Dean and Fackerell deny affray. Millar has pleaded not guilty to a separate charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Jheanelle Samuels, the security guard, punched Millar in the eye in self-defence to 'get her grip off me' as per her training.
She allegedly overheard an injured Fackerell say: "I started on one of them and I didn’t know there were more and they jumped in." She said this "gave me the assumption that’s how he got his head injury."
She had gone to get a first aid kit and said three Romanians – two men and a woman – walked past and asked Fackerell if he was OK. Some of the officers had an "aggressive reaction" and asked them "were you the ones who did it?" before punches were thrown, Samuels added.
"I saw the Romanians were outnumbered," she said. "I thought it was unfair for them to be beaten up so I tried to defuse the situation … I said: 'Stop — get off him. Leave him alone.'"
But there were "multiple fights" and "one of them had a Romanian in a headlock," she told the court.
Millar allegedly grabbed Samuels and screamed: "No."
She said Millar "pushed me back and then she grabbed me and kneed me in my left thigh."
Michaels-Dubois allegedly barged through the group and asked "what happened?" before he "shoved" Samuels. She had tried to walk away but he kept trying to follow her, she added.
"I was in serious pain. I was limping and had to retreat," she said. "At that point I saw they were beginning to scatter. I believe they had heard the police had been called."
The trial continues.
