Little John’s assault

Three students from the University of York fell victim to inappropriate and violent behaviour from the staff of a York bar earlier this month.

The group of first years had been visiting The Little John bar in the city centre with friends on the evening of Friday 3rd June to celebrate the end of exams, when a disturbance occurred, resulting in all three being forcibly removed from the premises when staff members took a dislike to them.

The ruckus began when one of the party flicked some of his slush puppy drink at a friend in jest, which unfortunately landed on another customer who was unwilling to let the incident go.

“He turned round and was getting very bitchy and catty and angry about it,” one of the students told Vision. Despite receiving an apology, the customer went on to make threats to the group. “This guy was like, ‘I know the manager, I’m gonna get you guys thrown out’.”

Events took a turn for the worse when the allegedly inebriated manager arrived on the scene. “He was absolutely obliterated; he was trashed, he’d been throwing people out arbitrarily all evening,” one of the party claimed to Vision. “He sort of came over and was like ‘this is my fucking bar, I can do what I want.'” The group was then ordered to put down their drinks and leave the establishment. “[Our friend] sort of said, ‘look, we’ve bought these drinks, we’re gonna stay here and drink them’.”

Upon saying this, the disruption promptly escalated, when the manager sought the assistance of three of the bar’s bouncers. “The bouncers grabbed [our friend] and grabbed the slush puppy out of [his] hand, and then went ‘You’ve gotta get out now, bitch!’ and poured it all over his front.” one of the group alleged. “I had a slush puppy as well, and I thought ‘he’s not getting away with that’, and I threw [it] in his face.” the student added. He then claims the bouncer “went wild, and started swinging punches.”

The group conceded to leave, but their efforts to calm the situation were in vain, as the pub’s manager continued to pursue the student as they was escorted from the building.

“[The bouncers] were trying to drag [the student] and not hurt him at all, or do anything violent, but the manager, whilst this was going on, was just punching [him] round the side,” alledged one student. “My shirt just got completely ripped to shreds, and I got thrown out the front door and then chased down the street by the manager.”

A female member of the party went on to inform Vision of her experiences of the night.
“After seeing him punching [my friend], I held my ground. He swaggered back into the bar, and he was stood there, talking to people, and I was like, ‘Hey excuse me, what do you think you were just doing. That was clearly unacceptable, I can’t believe you’d think you can get away with something like that in a bar.'”

The student claims this confrontation provoked the riled manager further, causing him to unleash a torrent of verbal and physical abuse upon the first year humanities student. “He cut me off and started throwing names at me and called me a slut. Then he lunged at me. He dragged me outside by my hair,” she claims.

The three students have decided not to involve the police, despite previous complaints of a similar nature having been made about what is described in online reviews as York’s ‘”only ‘gay friendly’ bar”.

Vision contacted representatives from The Little John pub, but they were unavailable for comment. However, reports from the group appeared to illustrate how apologetic the bouncers were about the incidents.