Murderer Still on Prison Roof, Now Dancing to Thong Song as Adoring Crowd Cheers
Convicted murderer turned prisoners’ rights protester Stuart Horner is nearing the end of his third day on the roof of Manchester, England’s Strangeways prison, and a throng of supporters has turned the standoff into a party. Police made some tentative attempts to remove Horner from the roof Tuesday, but he’s thus far held them off. And danced to Sisqo’s “Thong Song.”
According to the Manchester Evening News’s minute-by-minute coverage of Horner’s antics, he was able to hold officers off with one of the poles he ripped off of the roof. In a video, he appears to push away a police ladder and jab at the cops to keep them from coming up:
At last report, there were officers on one side of the roof, but Horner has been staying away from them.
The officers may be reluctant to bring Horner down by force because of what happened during the last rooftop protest at Strangeways, back in 1990—it ended with an infamous riot that killed 2 and wrecked part of the prison before it was finally put down.
Somewhere between 60 and 100 inmates were moved to other facilities today as a safety measure, the Evening News reports, and 25 others were relocated within Strangeways.
It looks like Horner will face a rainy night going into day four of his protest, but that hasn’t damped the spirits of his supporters, who were getting down to Bob Marley at last report.
The scene outside Strangeways. The crowds cheering for Stuart Horner. pic.twitter.com/Buls9DUclh
— Todd Fitzgerald (@TFitzgeraldMEN) September 15, 2015