Just Stop Oil protests took a shocking turn in London this morning after a 21-year-old activist was punched and kicked to the floor after the group blocked a road in South Kensington ‘causing a pregnant woman to crash her car’.
The victim, Daniel Knorr, 21, a student from Oxford had previously gained notoriety after being carried off the pitch at Lord’s by England cricketer Jonny Bairstow.
The biochemistry student is a serial Just Stop Oil agitator and was also arrested in April for trying to scale and cover ‘Dippy the Diplodocus’ with orange powder at a Coventry gallery.
In the graphic clip, a silver Mercedes can be seen pulled halfway across Cromwell Road in west London having apparently crashed.
A woman then leaves the car and screams ‘Stop now, I’m pregnant’, before another man gets out and angrily confronts the protesters, screaming: ‘Stop now, stop recording, you little s***.’
The man then appears to violently punch one activist in the face before stamping and kicking him while he lies prone on the ground.
In response, Just Stop Oil said: ‘Daniel was assaulted while marching this morning, and remained nonviolent throughout. Disruption is difficult, but it’s necessary.’
Speaking after the assault, Mr Knorr said: ‘I haven’t said anything to the police and I don’t plan to, but I’m afraid that the police might go after this man.
‘I feel no ill sentiment or ill will against him. It’s a difficult situation for anyone to be in and it’s bound to create frustration.
‘I can tell with the fact that he’d just been in a car accident, he was very stressed.’
A witness to the incident told DailyMail: ‘The protest was just like so many others we’ve seen in London with a string of people in orange bibs blocking two lanes of the street and marching slowly.’
The two lanes on the other side of the road weren’t blocked but were going slowly as people looked at what was happening.
‘A silver car I think must have been trying to switch lanes and he got hit at low speed by a van behind them on its driver side.’
‘A woman got out of the car and she was shouting at the protesters and then a man got out too and he just rushed over and started attacking the guy who seemed to be leading the Just Stop Oil group.
‘He punched him to the ground and then kicked him when it was on the ground. It was quite shockingly violent. It happened really quickly.
‘I’m not sure why they were so angry but I suspect they blamed the protest for causing the prang – and the one who got attacked had his own phone out so they may have thought he was filming them.
‘As I had been filming myself I didn’t want to stick around myself in case he turned on me so I didn’t see how it ended beyond the man in the red hat then talking to the van driver, presumably to pass on insurance details.
‘The whole episode was insane.’
Mr Knorr, a 21-year-old Biochemistry undergraduate, was one of three people arrested after he ran on to the world’s most famous cricket ground while hurling orange powder into the air in June.
England wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow was forced to take matters into his own hands by physically stopping him and carrying him across the outfield.
Knorr, who was also arrested in April trying to scale and cover ‘Dippy the Diplodocus’ with orange powder at a Coventry gallery, looked utterly delighted as a quietly determined Bairstow lugged him away before dumping him on the boundary for security to deal with.
Knorr was then dragged off by police.
The group has so far targeted over five locations in the capital resulting in pedestrians pushing them into the road and Sky Sports’ Chris Kamara being delayed for a TV appearance.
The day began with activists targeting the Department for Energy Security for Net Zero with with orange fire extinguishers resulting in their arrests.
So far, the Metropolitan Police have been called to other events in the capital at Marylebone Road, Parliament Square, Westminster Bridge, Victoria Street and on Vauxhall Bridge Road – and in all cases police issued section 12 notices to demonstrators.
