The images are hard to look at, and the details don’t make things any less brutal. A teenager was assaulted and knocked unconscious, all for telling a would-be suitor she wasn’t interested.
Gabrielle Walsh was out with a friend.
The 18-year-old, seen here, was out and about with her friend Kyle in the Gay Village of her hometown, Manchester, England. In the early morning hours of July 13th, something terrible happened.
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Gabrielle’s friend described the event.
Alliyah Morgan shared the brutal details in a Facebook post.
According to Alliyah, Gabrielle and Kyle were approached by a group of three men near Bloom Street at about 3:30 in the morning.
Gabrielle was knocked unconscious.
“[The attacker] punched [Gabrielle] once to the face unexpectedly and she instantly fell over and went unconscious,” wrote Alliyah. The pictures shared of Walsh reveal just how violent the punch was.
Her friend was also attacked.
Alliyah says that, after regaining consciousness, Gabrielle checked on her friend Kyle, who had also been attacked and was “bleeding heavily from the eye.” It’s a shocking account of a truly brutal attack.
What prompted the attack?
“This attack was completely unprovoked as she simply told the guy she wasn’t interested in him and as a result he did this,” Alliyah bluntly explained. “My friend is now currently in the eye hospital waiting to get stitched in her eye.”
The group of men allegedly stalked Walsh and her friend.
Walsh told the Manchester Evening News that she had taken off her shoes when a guy wandered over and told her that he liked her feet.
She just responded “OK” and then walked away with Kyle.
But instead of taking the hint, the guy and two buddies proceeded to follow Gabrielle and Kyle, even though they were trying to distance themselves.
Eventually, Gabrielle says that she turned to face them again and said “I’m sorry, I’m not interested.”
This prompted the man to point to Kyle and ask, “Who are you with, specky four eyes?” referring to Kyle’s glasses.
The harassment continued, before escalating.
“I was saying to Kyle, ‘let’s go'”, Gabrielle said . “Then [the attacker] hit me — he fully knocked me out. When I woke up I was on the floor and the three of them had jumped on Kyle as well.”
Kyle was covered in cuts and bruises, and his glasses were gone.
Volunteers from the Village Angels, a community safety partnership, gave them some first aid and offered to call an ambulance. The wait was too long, though, so Gabrielle took a taxi to the hospital.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much the hospital could do then.
They gave her some eye drops and sent her home. Later, she went back and they determined that she has a blood clot on the eye.
“It still can’t really see out of it, when I open my eye all I see is yellow,” she said.
Her assailant remains at large.
The man who attacked the pair is described as 5 foot 8 and wearing a pink t-shirt. Horrified local business owners say they’ll check CCTV footage to see if they can possibly identify the attacker. A witness has also come forward to confirm Gabrielle’s story.
Gabrielle is understandably shaken.
“Girls feel like they can’t say no. They feel like if they say no, then they might hurt you — and in this case it was true,” she said. “It’s scared me, I’m scared to go out, I’ve always got to be with somebody.”
What do you think?
No one likes being rejected, but everyone should be able to reject someone they’re not interested in without becoming the victim of an assault.
Let us know what you think of this story in the comments.
