Bottle-hurling yobs ambush taxi trip

Polly Roberts revealed the scarlet Toyota in which she was travelling was forced to make an emergency stop after being caught in a hail of beer and alco-pop glass bottles hurled by a group of hoodie-wearing and jeering teens.

The angry driver immediately stopped the Zcarz Taxis-registered vehicle, which was hit repeatedly, to challenge the louts, who ran off cheering and hurling insults in the direction of the Westleigh estate.

The mum said that while the incident may have been the first of its kind in her experience, the community had been “buzzing” for weeks with reports of similar tales of louts targeting motorists as they drove home.

By accident rather than design, the bottles crashed onto the top of the car and Ms Roberts believes if they had hit the windscreen, she and the driver could have been seriously hurt.

The incident, which has been reported to the police by the taxi driver, happened at 6.15pm last on Friday near Westleigh Lane’s junction with Yates Street.

Because the cab was in a line of traffic moving at less than 30 miles an hour she said it made it an easier target for the hooligans.

Ms Roberts said: “I was coming home from Christmas shopping at the Parsonage Retail Park in a taxi at teatime, it wasn’t late.

“The traffic wasn’t going very fast obviously because we had just come through the traffic lights, it is always busy at that time. But as we came level with Yates Street I just heard this almighty bang on the roof of the taxi which made me jump out of my skin.

“The taxi driver slammed on, he looked at me and I told him, ‘they are throwing again, aren’t they?’

“He got out of the car but, rather than scattering, they carried on throwing bottles while he was stood there and two or three more hit the car.

“I don’t think that they were throwing to hit the driver himself, but I can’t be sure.

“The culprits were on the opposite footpath and they were aged 12 to maybe 16 and shouted some abuse but I couldn’t hear clearly what it was. If they had hit the taxi windscreen and that had gone though, who knows what could have happened?

“This is the first time I have encountered it but I have been told that it is happening regularly on Wigan Road and Nel Pan Lane where I believe they actually broke a window on a bus.

“So something clearly needs doing about it before someone is seriously hurt - or worse. There was about three or four involved and they all had their dark hoodies pulled up over their heads.

“I couldn’t see whether the bottles had caused damage because it was dark by this time but they are going to cause scratches in the paint and dents, aren’t they?”

A spokesman for taxi firm Zcarz in Railway Road, had no one available to comment.