'We could've died': BMW driver relives riot ordeal

The violent scene in Hull was one of the most shocking in the UK at the time

A month on from riots which shocked the UK, the driver of a BMW that came under attack during the violent unrest says he is still traumatised by videos of the mob who ferociously descended on his car.

Marius, not his real name, knows the attack on him and his two cousins - all three from Romania - was played out to millions on social media as it happened in Hull on 3 August.

"We could’ve died there," he says.

"So to think you are dying - it's very, very traumatic."

The delivery driver, who moved to the city seven years ago, had not expected to come under fire that afternoon.

He had been helping his cousins with an errand when traffic was redirected due to the unfolding chaos on Ferensway, where missiles were being hurled at a line of police officers guarding a hotel housing asylum seekers.

Yards away on Jameson Street, bins were being set on fire and shops looted.

Shops were looted on Jameson Street during the riot in Hull on 3 August

Marius, who was driving back to his young family, had no choice but to head down a street called Milky Way, where cars at a garage run by a Kurdish family were being smashed up amid a backdrop of burning tyres.

There an angry crowd of men had taken up running makeshift check points deciding on who could use the back road.

A Romanian family got through ahead of Marius, but the father-of-two and his cousins were not so lucky.

"They jump on my car, punch it with metal things - everything they have in their hand," he recalls. "They broke my windows. We was very scared."

Even though he says he was punched, Marius feels fortunate to have dodged "one guy who tried to punch me with [a] metal bar".

"When I see his face he's furious and they wanna kill me," he says.

Marius has since repaired some of the damage to the car

Luckily Marius and his cousins, who were not badly injured, managed to escape and all three took refuge in the nearby hotel, which moments before had been attacked with glass bottles and other missiles smashing its windows.

The next day Marius's cousins and their families left for Romania because they were "scared for their lives".

However, the delivery driver remained but fearing further potential threats he took himself and his family to stay with another relative for a few days.

When I ask Marius why he thought his car was singled out, he replies: "They see me and my cousin [our] colour is a little dark and we have a beard.

"They think we are Muslim, but we are not. We are Romanian people, and Christian."

He explains he had never experienced any form of racist abuse before and had always felt Hull was a friendly and welcoming city - until now.

Marius says he had another racist encounter with a customer during a parcel delivery two weeks ago, in which he was told to "go back to your country. You're not welcome here".

"They look at us like [we are] strange," he says.

"But we try to stay here to make some good future for my kids."

Marius said he ran into a line of police officers who initially thought he was part of the mob

He stopped working for a week following the 3 August attack and felt unable to step out of his terraced house to avoid further potential threats.

He says his pregnant partner gets jumpy with any loud disturbing noise and his mother begged him to return home having seen videos of the incident.

"[It] gets me down. I don’t like any more to go to work. We just like to stay in the house," he says.

"Every morning when I go to work, my wife ask me: 'Be careful, look after yourself'."

In the ensuing days and weeks, a handful of men who played their part in the violence have been jailed as the government grapples with prison overcrowding.

For Marius, the sentences are not enough to tackle the underlying tensions that sparked the riots.

His face is "out there", he tells me.

Marius and his cousins fled to the hotel on Ferensway, which had also been under attack

Social media has brought him a level of unwanted fame he says with the footage a constant reminder of the terror he escaped.

Marius says when he came face-to-face with the group of rioters, he did not realise the extent of their vitriol.

It was only after he saw videos, in which shouts of “kill them” can be heard, that it dawned on him he was "lucky to be alive".

He says: "Everybody knows me and they say, 'Oh, this guy was here in the middle of the protest'.

"We don't want to see [those] videos any more because they don’t make me feel good."

Translation support by Consuela Tanase

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