Man, 60, jailed for violent disorder outside hotel housing asylum seekers

A 60-year-old man has been jailed for two years and eight months after causing an officer to fall to the floor as police clashed with demonstrators outside a hotel housing asylum seekers near Rotherham on 4 August.

Glyn Guest, of Pearson Crescent, Wombwell, admitted violent disorder last week and was sentenced today at Sheffield Crown Court.

Body-worn camera footage showed Guest repeatedly being pushed back by a riot shield as he approached a line of police six times outside of a Holiday Inn Express, before grabbing another shield, causing an officer to fall to the floor to cheering from the crowd.

The female officer whose body-worn camera footage was played said in an impact statement how she was “terrified for my safety” during the disorder, which saw more than 50 police injured and attempts to storm and set fire to the building.

The officer said “it was a horrific incident of mindless thuggery” and that she had encountered “nothing like it before” in her five-and-a-half years of service.

The Recorder of Sheffield, Judge Jeremy Richardson KC, said the conduct of the “mob” was “vile”, told Guest: “You were part of a violent mob and you were playing your part to the full.”

BBC News