By Sarah Curran
A BANGOR businesswoman fears for the safety of her shop as antisocial behaviour ramps up with the return of good weather.
As the sun begins to make a welcome reappearance, so too has a spate of antisocial behaviour in the city, with a group of teenage boys terrorising staff and customers in various shops.
Bloomfield Shopping Centre also suffered anti- social behaviour at the hands of youths earlier this week, with police attending the incident and subsequently visiting homes after identifying those involved.
Katie Nguyen, who owns Diamond Nails and Spa, on Main Street, said her shop has suffered anti-social abuse for over a year, adding that it often peaked when the good weather returned.
From theft, to throwing food items in her shop, to shouting verbal abuse at the Vietnamese national, Katie said she was
worried about her nail salon and pleaded to parents to ensure their youngsters were safe, adding that such behaviour elsewhere could lead to ‘a big problem’.
Describing some of the incidents she has had in her shop, Katie, who has lived in Northern Ireland for the last 10 years, told how last week a group of teenage boys entered her salon and walked around the kitchen and toilet area.
Her partner, who also works in the salon, asked the boys to leave the premises and said the boys left laughing.
The boys returned on Friday afternoon, at around 4.10pm. Katie recalled: “We had a few customers in here and we were sitting by the window doing our job when we saw the boy come up here. He came in and said ‘hi’ and then threw something.”
The item thrown was a large packet of crisps which nearly hit one of Katie’s customers on the head and made a huge mess across the store.
Katie said she had been scared when the incident occurred.
She said: “I was shaking a lot. I worried if my customers were OK.” “So when he came in he was running out and laughing and swearing at us,” she added.
Katie and two of her customers left the salon and asked the boy to talk with them and ask why he had thrown the item but he began swearing again.
“I was shaking,” Katie said, noting the teenager to be around 15 years-old.
“After an hour I was finished so I went home and saw my best friend and she could see I was still shaking and I told her what happened and she was so mad,” she continued.
Katie noted that her salon had CCTV installed and despite telling the boys this on numerous occasions, said they did not care.
“They are so cheeky sometimes. Every time they come in here I tell them, please be careful what you do, we have CCTV but they just say ‘hello’ – they aren’t afraid of police or anything,” she said.
On reporting the incident to the police, Katie said she was told officers would not come out to the shop as nobody was injured, but would ‘keep an eye’ on things.
Katie said the anti-social behaviour had been going on for over a year now, recalling how boys had stolen their fruit offering to Buddha.
“They came and took all the fruit from the Buddha and took our lighter and everything,” she said.
On other occasions, Katie has found them climbing the back of her shop and feared for their safety, asking them to come down – resulting in them throwing bangers at her.
“I say I’ll call the police and they say they aren’t scared. I have rang the police and I told them they had been to the shop and stole a few times but they said they would keep an eye on it, but it’s getting worse,” she said.
Katie added: “I know they are only children and they grow up, but I just hope they are being looked after and are safe. If they were doing this to another place it could be a big problem!”
Katie added that she feared for the safety of her shop when she is not on the premises, noting that it was her livelihood.
