Street cleaner attacked by mob

A COUNCIL street sweeper was racially assaulted as he cleaned a Westhulme subway.

The 48-year-old was cleaning the Featherstall Road subway close to the Martha Street entrance at 9.20am on Tuesday when a gang of six Asian youths smashed a wooden post through the side window.

They then rained blows on the sweeper with clubs, posts and bats and hit the victim’s leg as he tried to get out of the vehicle.

As the attack took place, the gang shouted, “Asians rule supreme” and “get out of our area white scum”. They ran away when the victim called the police.

The victim, who has worked for the council for four years, was left shaken and had to take the rest of the day off work.

Oldham Council’s service director for Streetscene. Mark Odell. confirmed that a member of the road sweeping team was involved in an incident while cleaning the subway at Featherstall Road roundabout.

He added: “The worker reported the incident to the police who attended the scene and took a statement.

“As a result of the incident we have reviewed our risk assessments and made some changes to the way our road sweeping staff operate in future.

“Thankfully incidents where our staff are abused or worse by members of the public are rare.”

Police say they are treating the matter as a racially aggravated incident and are investigating.