Students 'wreak havoc' on Hampstead street

A MOB of drunken youngsters swept through a Hampstead street like a tornado last night leaving the street strewn with roadwork barriers and bins. The 15-strong posse, believed to be students, marched along Frognal at around 10pm tearing apart

A MOB of drunken youngsters swept through a Hampstead street like a "tornado" last night (Thursday) leaving the street strewn with roadwork barriers and bins.

The 15-strong posse, believed to be students, marched along Frognal at around 10pm tearing apart the road works, kicking over traffic lights and bins, stomping over cars, leaving stunned residents having to call 999.

Workmen who are repairing the old Victorian water pipes spent the first hour of their day clearing up the mess and rebuilding the barriers around the trenches on the road.

One resident Matt McCarthy told the Ham&High: "I don't know where they came from but police told us they had received a lot of complaints. They were all boozed up just trashing everything. There are literally around 100 barriers down the road and they threw every single one into the street and all the bins were tipped up. One of my neighbours shouted at them but then came running back inside because she was scared. The police arrived pretty quickly and said they had had problems with the group all night.

"The residents had to clear up a lot of it just to make the road passable. When I went to work at 6am I saw all the damage they had caused. It looked like a tornado had been through Frognal. This is not something that usually happens up here. It came absolutely out of the blue. You sometimes get things happening at the end of term when students or pupils get drunk en masse."

The Ham&High understands one of the youths was arrested but this is yet to be confirmed by police.