{"id":220816,"date":"2025-12-07T22:01:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T22:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/220816\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T22:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T22:01:09","slug":"three-year-old-girl-among-those-treated-after-pepper-spray-attack-at-heathrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/220816\/","title":{"rendered":"Three-year-old girl among those treated after \u2018pepper spray\u2019 attack at Heathrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

A three-year-old girl<\/strong> is among those who were treated by ambulance crews after a group of men used pepper spray<\/strong> on a woman they had robbed of her suitcase at Heathrow Airport<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Officers were called at 8:11am on Sunday to reports that multiple people had been assaulted by a group of men at the multi-storey car park at Terminal 3.<\/p>\n

Armed officers called to the scene found a number of people who had been sprayed with what the Metropolitan Police said is believed to be a type of pepper spray.<\/p>\n

One of the 21 patients the London Ambulance service treated was a three-year-old girl, police said, and five were taken to hospital.<\/p>\n

Their injuries are not believed to be life-changing or life-threatening.<\/p>\n

A 31-year-old man who was arrested on suspicion of assault remained in custody on Sunday afternoon, police said.<\/p>\n

Officers said the man was arrested by 8:20am, within nine minutes of the report being received.<\/p>\n

Witness Tom Bate told the BBC he had been waiting to be picked up from the car park when he saw \u201cyoung men dressed in black darting through the crowd\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said he felt a burning at the back of his throat after they left, with other people nearby beginning to cough.<\/p>\n

Officers continue to hunt for other suspects but Scotland Yard confirmed the incident is not being treated as terrorism.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so glad to hear now that it\u2019s not terrorism because it felt like I was in the middle of an attack \u2013 it was pretty intense,\u201d Mr Bate told the BBC.<\/p>\n

\"HeathrowElizabeth Line passengers faced long queues to exit Terminal 2\/3 station amid overcrowding (PA)<\/p>\n

Footage on social media appeared to show a man being handcuffed by an armed officer while another searched him.<\/p>\n

Commander Peter Stevens said: \u201cOur team have been working at pace today to review CCTV from the area and speak with witnesses at the scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this stage, it\u2019s understood that a woman was robbed of her suitcase by a group of four men, who sprayed a substance believed to be pepper spray in her direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis occurred within a car park lift, with those in the lift and surrounding area affected by the spray.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur officers are working to determine the full circumstances around what happened but we do believe this to be an isolated incident with those directly involved known to each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe appreciate that this has been a concerning incident and I commend the actions of the emergency services and members of staff at Heathrow Airport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"EmergencyEmergency vehicles outside Heathrow Terminal 3 following the arrest (Ellie Crabbe\/PA)<\/p>\n

By midday, dozens of passengers were waiting at the terminal\u2019s bus stop for shuttles to the long-stay car park and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

One family, who did not wish to be named, said they had waited for three hours at the bus stop after their flight landed at around 8am.<\/p>\n

Heathrow staff handed out bottled water to waiting passengers on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n

A Heathrow spokesman said: \u201cThe shuttle buses to the long-stay car park were impacted by congestion on the roads following an earlier incident which saw the Central Terminal Area tunnel closed for safety reasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe buses are now operating as normal and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rail passengers at Heathrow Terminal 2\/3 station also faced long queues amid overcrowding.<\/p>\n

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call 101, quoting CAD 1803 7 DEC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A three-year-old girl is among those who were treated by ambulance crews after a group of men used…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-220816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-world","21":"tag-world-news","22":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115680541985347052","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}