Army veteran describes how she fought her way through a ‘baying mob’ in a bid to stop the bare-knuckle fight at a Harborough park

An army veteran has described how she fought her way through a ‘baying mob’ in a bid to stop the bare-knuckle fight during the troubles at a Harborough park at the weekend.

Gabby Read said was later followed home when she returned to the park to confront a crowd of revellers at Little Bowden Recreation Ground.

As we have previously reported, trouble erupted on Friday evening and continued into the early hours of Saturday morning, when more than one hundred people assembled at the park for an unauthorised party.

Dozens of local residents contacted police to report vandals smashing beer bottles onto the playground of Little Bowden Primary School, which backs onto the park, a bare-knuckle fight and clashes between young men armed with iron bars.

Gabby said: “I got right between the two guys fighting and was screaming at them to stop. Amazingly they did.

"I served as a combat medic in Afghanistan so I don’t get scared that easily.

“But when I got home, the trouble seemed to escalate as more and more people arrived on the park.

“The music was incredibly loud and was keeping people up. I went back out [to the park] but the atmosphere had changed. You could smell cannabis, nearly everyone was drinking, lots of people were hyper, I was yelling at the crowd to go home and told them that I’d called the police.

“One lad replied ‘the police have already been out, they can’t do anything to us.’ I was asking them why they were smoking cannabis in the park and another person bragged ‘it’s cocaine we’re on.”

Gabby, 48, said when she was leaving the park two men began following her and blocked her path, she added: “They towered over me. They kept asking where I lived and wanted to know what I was doing with my phone. I think they thought I’d been filming them.

“At one stage they got in front of me to stop me walking past but I got away and waited on Northampton Road until the police came. The two men hung around to see what I was doing but thankfully I got home safe.”

Two knives were among a number of weapons recovered by Leicestershire Police when they attended the scene. A temporary dispersal zone was created over the weekend to deter people from gathering in the park and surrounding streets.

Little Bowden Primary School also reported finding human waste in its community garden as well as broken glass in the playground.

Deputy head Hayley Brown said: “I was still at the school on Friday evening weeding the garden and a number of individuals tried to gain entry even though it says ‘school garden’ on the gate.

“One said ‘we’ve been told this is where we go for the toilet’. That morning we had found lots of human poo there. There were many smashed beer bottles in the playground too.

“It looked like there had been a competition to see who could throw the bottles over the roof of the school. This is obviously a big problem for us, especially as we’re open.”