A court heard how passengers and employees were left terrified after the incident.
The incident happened at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 3 (Image: PA)
Passengers at the UK’s busiest airport were left “vomitting blood” after a masked gang sprayed tear gas and stole suitcases. Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 3 was closed for hours after the terrifying incident saw more than 20 people treated by paramedics.
Armed police officers descended on the Terminal 3 car park after the men sprayed multiple victims with the substance at around 8:11am on December 7 last year.
Tyrone Richards, 31, Anton Clarke-Butcher, 25, Omoneke Whyte, 31, and Denzel Eduardo 29, have now pleaded guilty to affray at Isleworth Crown Court in June.
At the time of the attack, the car park was busy with passengers arriving and meeting people from flights. Five people were rushed to hospital following the “intense attack”, which started after a woman was robbed of her suitcase at around 8:10am.
Today, a sentence hearing at Isleworth Crown Court heard that three of the defendants, wearing face coverings and dark clothing, sprayed a substance “believed to be CS spray” into a lift at an airport car park just after 8am, The Sun reported.
In the lift were two women who had arrived on a flight from Johannesburg, South Africa, that morning and two men who had met the women at the airport.
The court heard how passengers and employees were coughing and vomiting blood (Image: Getty Images)
The defendants were prevented from entering the lift by the group as “innocent parties ran away from the lift in some distress,” the court heard.
The court was also told that gas was emitted when the lift arrived at the ground floor, causing “difficulties for people, particularly at Caffè Nero nearby”, with some people taken to hospital.
A barista at Caffè Nero, who started to cough and vomit blood, told the court she was “scared” as she “felt fine one minute and then almost instantly unwell”.
The passengers who had arrived from Johannesburg then went to an airport taxi forecourt where the defendants followed them and took their suitcases, which were never recovered.
CS gas is used by police forces worldwide as a tear gas to incapacitate people temporarily. The gas was sprayed in the face of one of the women in close range at 8.03am, “causing her to start coughing and choking,” the court heard.
The incident caused severe delays for passengers, including issues with shuttle buses and trains after Terminal 3 was locked down.
A customer service agent at Terminal 3 described the incident as “terrifying”, sharing that she “felt dizzy and like I was going to pass out”.
The employee also claimed that a woman in a wheelchair she was assisting “was struggling to breathe and using an inhaler”.
One of the defendants was arrested at Heathrow Airport (Image: Hudaifa Yunis / SWNS)
Prosecutor Gray Rutter said he “could not say exactly what led to this incident”, but “one may suspect what was going”. The incident left “members of the public coughing, vomiting, and some vomited blood,” he added.
Richards was arrested while still at the airport, while the other three defendants were later identified and arrested separately.
Genevieve Moss, representing Eduardo, said the CS gas “was discharged by the rival group”, adding that he has asthma and this would have had a “dangerous impact on him”.
The lawyer said Eduardo, who has 12 previous convictions for 18 offences, would have “not agreed to take part in any activity involving such a substance” and expressed “deep remorse”.
Rushnay Sikander, representing Whyte, said he was “very remorseful”, adding he had a “traumatic childhood”.
Shanda McAteer, representing Clarke-Butcher, who has 14 convictions for 31 offences, said he denied releasing the gas and “genuinely expresses remorse”.
Patrick Harte, representing Richards, who has three previous convictions, said he was “not present when the first spray was released” and was “sorry to innocent bystanders suffering anguish”.
The sentencing hearing continues.