After a recycling bag smashed through a bedroom window, terrifying a Cardiff Law student, the response of the police was “literally useless”, claimed witnesses.
At 4am on Thursday June 4, two drunken men hurled a recycling bag full of glass bottles and sharp tins through the ground floor window of 31 Thesiger Street, where the second-year Law student had been sleeping.
She wishes to remain anonymous ,but told gair rhydd how scared she was, mistaking the recycling bag for a burglar: “I jumped out of my skin and my first reaction was to scream and my first instinct was to get out of my room as quickly as possible. I just didn’t expect it at all.
“I heard them run away laughing like it was a drunken prank but they obviously just did not think of the consequences.”
Stacey Prince, a first-year Business Management student at Cardiff University, was walking home from a night out when she heard a “massive smash and a girl screaming and screaming” from down the road.
Stacey then phoned the police but was put on hold for three minutes and 50 seconds.
When they eventually turned up 15 minutes later, the two men had long since run off, in different directions, and the police said that it was “nothing to do with us” reported Stacey.
She said: “The police were literally useless. I was gob-smacked at how little they helped and the girl was obviously really shaken up.”
Both the Law student and her housemates agreed: “The police were really unhelpful and they said that it wasn’t really their responsibility.”
Despite this, she also said that the police may have caught one of the men soon after the incident but she has not yet been contacted to identify him.
Her housemate, Jo, a second-year Marine Geography student, told gair rhydd that their pyjama-clad neighbours and passers-by were much more helpful at the time. One neighbour even cut his hand on the broken glass as he helped to board it up with empty recycling bags.
Her other housemate, Sam, a second-year Social Policy and Criminology student, said that he woke up to the screams: “The whole window was smashed with huge pieces of glass all over the floor and her bed. The bag wasn’t that heavy so they must have thrown it with quite a bit of force.
“Luckily the blinds stopped the bag from falling through onto her bed,” he added.
The shocked Law student has since gone home as she does not feel safe in her house in Cardiff any more: “The neighbours were really helpful and taped up the window but I didn’t feel safe after that so I’ve moved all my stuff home to keep it safe.”
After the incident, Stacey, who lives nearby, did not feel safe in her ground floor bedroom either.
She said: “They had no motive, it was just a bit of banter for them and they ran off laughing but I don’t think it was funny at all. It must have been horrible for her.”
