Police arrested a man at London\u2019s Heathrow Airport after a crowd of people were hit with pepper spray during a robbery at a parking garage that caused several hours of travel disruptions.<\/p>\n
Five people were taken by ambulance to a hospital and another 16, including a 3-year-old girl, were treated at the scene, officials said. None of the injuries was believed to be serious.<\/p>\n
The incident in the Terminal 3 garage on the outskirts of London happened when a group of four men stole a woman\u2019s suitcase in an elevator and sprayed her with an irritant, Metropolitan Police said.<\/p>\n
Passenger Tom Bate said he saw three young men in black with their heads covered run from the elevator and then he experienced a burning sensation in his throat and immediately began hacking.<\/p>\n
“Everyone in the room was coughing,” he told Sky News. “It was one of the weirdest things I\u2019ve ever experienced.”<\/p>\n
Police said the robbery victim and the assailants knew each other and the crime was not being investigated as terrorism.<\/p>\n
Bate said he initially feared the worst as a large group of officers carrying guns \u2014 a rarity in the UK where most police don\u2019t carry weapons \u2014 ran past him shouting.<\/p>\n
“It was absolutely terrifying and I 100% believed that I was in a terrorist attack for a few moments,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said an officer pointed a gun at a man and ordered him to the ground to arrest him.<\/p>\n
A 31-year-old man was held on suspicion of assault. Police were searching for the other suspects who left the scene.<\/p>\n
The incident caused several hours of delays for passengers trying to get to and from the airport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police arrested a man at London\u2019s Heathrow Airport after a crowd of people were hit with pepper spray…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,16,9043,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-618516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-uk-europe","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}