Danny Tommo – aka the former kidnapper and drug dealer Daniel Thomas – has had quite a fortnight. Banned from Dover, stripped of his fundraising accounts and reduced to browsing boatyards without actually buying anything, he has found a fresh town to exploit with a fresh grievance.
This time it is Epsom, Surrey, where a reported rape became, in Tommo’s hands, another vehicle for rage-baiting, cash extraction and a cameo appearance in front of riot police.
Careful investigation
The alleged assault on a woman in her twenties in the early hours of Saturday 11 April, reported to have occurred outside Epsom Methodist Church after she left a nearby nightclub, was a serious matter that warranted exactly what Surrey Police provided: a careful, evidence-led investigation.
What it did not warrant, but what it swiftly received, was Tommo materialising in the town centre on Wednesday with a microphone, a livestream and a crowd primed by days of online speculation.
Confronting police
Confronting a riot officer, he told the assembled crowd: “We want to know who raped the girl.”
He also told them that the police “know exactly who it is. They know exactly who did this to that girl.”
He knew no such thing, and neither did anyone else.
Earlier in the day, he had been on the streets of Epsom with a microphone encouraging people to join the protest and filming it for YouTube, accusing officers of covering up the identity of the woman’s attackers.
By the evening, dozens of police officers in helmets and holding shields were on the scene, with objects thrown at them. Some in the crowd threw bottles and plant pots. The protest blocked the road and caused disruption before dispersing around 8pm.
Blunt response
Local MP Helen Maguire responded bluntly: “To those who have come into Epsom from outside our community to spread division and cause disruption, take it elsewhere, it won’t be tolerated.”
Then, yesterday, Surrey Police issued a statement that reduced the entire exercise to rubble.
Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Grahame confirmed that officers had reviewed extensive CCTV, interviewed potential witnesses, conducted forensic investigations and carried out house-to-house enquiries – and had “not found any evidence of the offence as reported”.
No evidence
She was equally direct on the question that Tommo had been stoking all week: “There is no evidence that asylum seekers or immigrants were involved.”
In other words, Tommo had helped whip up a riot over an allegation that police cannot currently corroborate, in service of a racist, anti-migrant narrative that police have explicitly ruled out.
The investigation continues, but the community of Epsom deserves considerably better than to have its anxieties weaponised by an unscrupulous outside agitator whose primary business model is monetised outrage and who, we know from a recently leaked telephone recording, is desperate for cash.
