Woman who attacked NHS worker and pals in Wetherspoons brawl reveals she has been sacked from office job after viral vid
A WOMAN who attacked an NHS worker for “speaking Polish too loudly” at a Wetherspoons pub says she has been sacked from her job.
Anna Rutkowska, 36, was drinking with friends in Bristol as pubs reopened on ‘Super Saturday’ when Clare McCarthy, 30, lunged at her.
McCarthy allegedly yelled “you’re in England now” at Anna and her pals as they spoke Polish.
Footage of the attack went viral – and now McCarthy says she has been sacked from her job as a recruitment consultant.
She denied that she had yelled racist insults at the group and said they had stared and laughed at her before one of them pushed her when she confronted them.
“Racism happens all the time and it is wrong, I’ve always thought that. I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” she told Mail Online.
“But it’s almost as bad to accuse someone of racism when I have not muttered anything of the kind. This woman has accused me of attacking her and I know that in the eyes of the law that if someone touches you first they are the instigator so I contacted the police today and reported the incident.
“I want her to know that she is now part of the investigation and when that investigation is complete I will be pursuing her for defamation of character and loss of earnings.”
McCarthy said she wasn’t drunk, and that the other group had been laughing at her for up to 20 minutes.
Footage taken by Anna shows McCarthy slapping and hitting someone off-camera.
A man – believed to be McCarthy’s brother – then wades in before the woman lands a kick.
Polish-born Anna, who works at an NHS care home, said: “This is what happened on our first night out to a pub.”
She said the fight in The Kingswood Colliers pub in Bristol on Saturday night was triggered by her group speaking too loud in their native tongue.
Anna added: “We were speaking ‘too loud in Polish’ with those people telling us, ‘you are in England now’.
“After which the girl attacked my friend, and then the staff asked us to leave, not bothering to ask anyone what happened.
“She’s saying ‘you hit me first’ because she’s repeating what my friend is saying.”
Violence broke out across the country as thousands flocked to the nation’s pubs on the first day they reopened since March.
Police were called to break up a fight between two groups at a Wetherspoons in West Yorkshire.
Shocking footage shows a large crowd in a scuffle at The Broken Bridge in Pontefract as staff rushed in to break it up.
And a mass beer garden brawl broke out outside the Three Tuns in Tamworth, Staffordshire.
Some pubs were even forced to close early as fights erupted after an estimated 15 million pints were downed in a day.
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The Copt Oak in Narborough, Leicestershire, shut eary after a punter was assaulted and suffered neck injuries.
A police chief warned it was “crystal clear” boozers were not observing social distancing rules.
John Apter, Chair of the Police Federation, said he dealt with “naked men, happy drunks, angry drunks, fights and more angry drunks” on shift in Southampton.