Horrified market traders in London’s Petticoat Lane rescued a young woman found in a doorway beaten and stabbed with her face badly disfigured.
They saw a man running from the scene as they arrived to set up for the Sunday street market.
The woman was found in the doorway leading up to flats above the Fressco Lebanese restaurant in Middlesex Street, Aldgate.
“It looked like her lips and nose had been slashed,” said one of the traders who found her, who asked not to be identified.
“She was naked and covered in blood. It was horrific.
“We were all in shock—it’s not a thing you ever want to witness.”
The woman, thought to be from Thailand, was treated by emergency paramedics at the scene, then taken by ambulance to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel where she has undergone facial surgery.
Tilda Koprcosor, 27, a waitress at the Fressco restaurant, said: “I heard the woman call for help three times. The stallholders ran to her and called for an ambulance, then police arrived.”
The man witnesses saw run across the street away from the doorway tripped over a market trolley, then disappeared down Wentworth Street, they said.
A 38-year-old man was being held by police in east London in connection with the incident, Scotland Yard confirmed today.
A police statement said: “We were called to Middlesex Street to a woman injured in street. She has been taken to hospital with head and facial injuries and remains in serious, but stable condition.”
The man being held was arrested last night at Lewisham in south London on suspicion of GBH. Inquiries continue.
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