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A Cheadle man caught on camera the moment he was racially abused and told "I'll kill you" by a man in the middle of Cheadle village, Stockport, yesterday evening.
The victim, who chose to stay anonymous, shared video footage with the Manchester Evening News and spoke of his anger as he watched two men verbally abuse a homeless man before turning on him. The victim told the M.E.N that he did not approach the men, but was targeted after they noticed he was filming.
In the shocking clip, a man can be seen jabbing at the cameraman with umbrellas, while shouting racial slurs before telling him "I'll tell you what, I'm going to do you a deal. If you put that on Facebook, I'll kill you."
A Greater Manchester Police (GMP) spokesperson said one man has been arrested for assault. Enquiries are still ongoing, but police confirmed that they were called to a 'racially aggravated altercation' and said 'this type of behaviour will not be tolerated in any circumstances'.
The victim told the M.E.N he was on his way back from doing his shopping at the Tesco Express on Wilmslow Road, when he noticed a man harassing a homeless person nearby, while his friend stood watching.
"The homeless guy was there just minding his own business - he's a local homeless man who everybody knows," he said. "The man with the stick in the video started saying to him things like 'why are you here?' and 'why don't you work?', being nasty like that."
The witness said that one of the men became "really aggressive" after the homeless man told him he had served in Iraq, questioning him about which regiment he had been in and where he had been stationed.
"When the homeless guy couldn't answer, he got very aggressive and started saying things like 'you f***ing c***, you never served in the army," he said. He told the M.E.N that the man continued to verbally abuse him, telling him they had just come from the funeral of a man who served in Iraq.
The man then allegedly started to wave his walking stick in front of his victim, at which point the altercation became physical. The witness said a young couple, who had also just emerged from Tesco, began to intervene - at which point he started recording.
"It got physical, and I started to walk forward thinking, that's enough now," he said. "But these guys went ahead of me first." He admitted that he was "really happy" they stepped up, as fears of a racially aggravated attack were lingering in his mind.
"At that point, they [the men] got very aggressive towards the white couple," he said. "I didn't think he could see me recording. But that was when he [the man with the umbrella] turned to me and said, 'if you don't put that away I'm going to f***ing leather you.
"At that point it became very, very real because I was on my own. There were more than a dozen people watching, but I thought, I'm actually on my own. I don't have any fear. But when he said 'I'm going to kill you', it became very real."