A man accused of taking part in a riot outside a Merseyside hotel housing asylum seekers told a jury he went to take part in a “peaceful protest” about local girls allegedly being propositioned by the hotel residents.
Brian McPadden, 61, admitted going to protest outside the Suites hotel in Knowsley on 10 February last year but said he did not throw any of the missiles that left three police officers injured, or set fire to a police van.
At the time, 163 single men were staying in the hotel while they awaited decisions on their asylum cases, the court has heard.
McPadden, a former factory worker, is on trial at Liverpool crown court accused of violent disorder, along with four other men.
On Monday the judge, Mr Justice Watson, ordered the jury to record not guilty verdicts against the three women on trial – Cheryl Nicholls, Nicola Elliott and Jennifer Knox. There was “insufficient evidence that they used or threatened unlawful violence” with others at the scene, the judge said.
Eleven people have already been convicted for their part in the incident, the jury has heard.
Giving evidence, McPadden said he went along to the protest on a whim, wearing shorts and making no attempt to cover his face. “I never turned it into a riot,” he said. He maintained he did not have a problem with “all” asylum seekers but a “handful of them” who he said had been “chatting up all the young girls” in the local park in Kirkby.
He was caught on police cameras shouting “we’re the innocent ones, not them”, and “there’s one thing you don’t know, you don’t know Kirkby, we stick up for ourselves”.
The jury has seen body-worn footage from the police recording McPadden shouting “they better not leave that place in the next few days cause they’ll be dead” and “every Friday we’ll be here, them bastards won’t be”.
Cross-examined by the prosecutor Martyn Walsh, McPadden said this was not a death threat directed towards the asylum seekers, but a warning to police that “the young kids” locally would attack them. “Kirby was volatile that day,” he said.
He said he was embarrassed at the foul language he used towards the hotel residents. He was captured in front of a police van waving and pointing towards the hotel shouting “we protect our own, yous are not from Kirkby, we are, these are twats” as missiles were thrown at police.
The trial continues.
