Brick attack

A MAN was struck on the head by part of a brick at the Imperial pub in Wincheap on Saturday evening.

Phil Newbury, 43, of Oxford Road, was outside in the smoking area when a heavy lump of mortar was thrown over a garden wall. He was left with minor injuries and taken to hospital to be checked over. The pub landlord, Roger Thirtle, called the police after the incident because of the increasing concern of vandalism in the area.

“It is just disgusting that someone, who’s got no reason to randomly throw this lump of brick, does so without any care of who’s sitting under there,” said Mr Thirtle. “It was nothing to do with our pub and we were having a very nice night with lots of people here.”

He had only recently had a roof built over the smoking area and luckily this prevented more of the lump of brick hitting Mr Newbury on the head.

“If the roof hadn’t been there we could have had a different scenario and it could have been quite a serious injury,” added Mr Thirtle.

Uni president announced

AFTER a week of voting, the results of Canterbury Christ Church University’s student elections were revealed on campus on Friday.

Silvia Rasca, 22, was announced as Student Union President when Dave Gilmore, a representative of the National Union of Students, read out the winning positions to the eager candidates.

Other winners included Joan Bartson-Umuliisa as Vice President (Education and Welfare), Anca Popescu as Vice President (Student Activities) and Matthew Power as Vice President (Sports).

Miss Rasca currently holds the position of Vice President (Education and Welfare). She said this gave her a good starting point to aim for President as she’s already done a lot for the university but wants to do more.

“I am very pleased to be elected and I was ecstatic at the time,” she said. “The most pleasing thing is that students believed in me and my policies and they acknowledged the need for continuity. I am planning on keeping the good relationship with university staff and working together for the benefit of students. I’m so pleased to have an entirely new team; it should be highly beneficial to the Union.”

Candidates were campaigning in the weeks leading up to the elections results day and the Student Union building was covered in posters and banners. Ellie Martin, one of the election organisers, said there was a “constant buzz” throughout the whole week of elections. She said: “As soon as voting opened people were coming through the door and they just didn’t stop.”

“There was such a positive atmosphere among everyone and all the candidates campaigned really hard to convince people to vote for them. We were really pleased with the turn out and we had a lot more votes than last year.”

It was reported that over 1,400 votes were cast but with the different positions and many candidates going for them, organisers had to sort through nearly 21,000 ballot slips. This took just under eight hours and the results were announced straight after.

The winning candidates will take-up their positions at the start of the next academic year in September.

Manouvre mishap

A YOUNG woman has been left with a damaged car after an impatient driver drove into her at a petrol station in Grove Green last Friday.

Lisa Gilbert, 22, was waiting to use a petrol pump when the driver close behind tried to quickly move into an available space next to her and scraped down the right side of her car, leaving a dent and some big scratches.

“I could see in my mirror that he was going to hit me so I tried to get in gear and let the handbrake off but I couldn’t do it quickly enough,” she said. “There was no damage to his car but he admitted it was his fault so he’d pay to have it fixed.”

Miss Gilbert was left shaken as it was her first accident in five years of driving. She added: “The other driver was in his 70s and he kept apologising and was a bit embarrassed I think. But he was no problem at all, which made the whole situation better.”

Luckily, the other driver’s insurance company is paying for Miss Gilbert to have a courtesy car so she can get about and still get to work. The trainee department manager only bought the brand new car six months ago.

“It’s annoying that this has happened, especially because it’s been taken away for repair and the recent snow means it may be kept for longer,” she said. “They are due to return the car to me but the lorry it comes on can’t get out on the roads because it’s too dangerous.”

Meanwhile, Miss Gilbert has to drive a car she is not particularly fond of. “But I’m pleased because it means I’ve still got a set of wheels so I can get around,” she said.

A great pizza evidence

A PIZZA box was used to identify the suspects of an attempted break-in on Friday.

The box was left in the garden of a house, occupied by five student girls, in Reed Avenue, at around 2am.

Lucy Harrington, 18, was the first to notice that there were people in the garden. As she went to check downstairs she could see someone trying to break in through the kitchen door.

“There was another person trying to break down the garden fence as well,” said Miss Harrington, a fresher at Canterbury Christ Church University. “One of my other housemates spotted a young lad running across the garden so we just all ran upstairs to hide. We didn’t know how many people were out there and if they’d actually get into the house. We were so scared.”

When the police arrived they checked the garden and found a Domino’s pizza box had been left behind. Forensic evidence led them to one suspect, and matched with the descriptions from the girls, an arrest was made.

The police also took the box to the Domino’s takeaway on Military Road where they could scan the barcode and work out who bought the pizza and what time they were in. After checking on CCTV, there were images of two young men buying the pizza and this gave the police two more positive identities.

Miss Harrington said: “It was very clever how the police worked out who it was. By identifying two of them on camera they could link with our descriptions so they knew exactly who it was. Even the forensic evidence, it’s like something you see on TV.”

Students are urged to be safe and sensible while living away from home. Houses where young people live are seen as easy targets by burglars.