Police called to 'illegal rave' in Hambrook warehouse

Police have been called to what they describe as an illegal rave in a disused warehouse on the outskirts of Bristol.

A number of vehicles started arriving on Old Gloucester Road in Hambrook, South Gloucestershire, in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Avon and Somerset Police attended and put road closures in place to prevent more people arriving.

The force estimates 400 to 500 people to have attended.

"Public safety is our absolute priority when responding to these events," said police.

People wrote on Facebook to say that the music could be heard across a wide area including Frampton Cotterell and Winterbourne.

A resident who lives near the site said they had been kept awake by the noise.

"We were up until three in the morning," he said.

"People were urinating on our fence, not just men, and they were being sick on the pavement."

Chf Insp Dan Forster said officers arrived on site within about 15 minutes of being called and that the event was already well-established.

It is the second unlicensed music event at the location in recent weeks and police say they will contact the landowner to try to prevent it from happening again.

Ch Insp Forster explained that for safety reasons, officers did not shut down the gathering immediately but kept a presence throughout the night and moved in to close it down in daylight hours on Sunday morning.

"For a police officer to walk in and just pull the plug when you've got 500 people in an unlit warehouse is a really unsafe thing to do," he said.

"You only have to look at the news which has come in from South Korea to understand how serious and the potential for a crowd crush is in these situations and for people to get seriously injured.

"This was an unlicensed and unmanaged event so you don't have the security features that you would do with a festival-type event."

He added: "The decision taken was to try to prevent more people from attending, to make a sound assessment and then decide when we could safely shut that event down."

Chf Insp Forster said "a handful" of people were detained and removed from the location but there had been no arrests.

The music stopped shortly after 10:00 GMT on Sunday, with police officers working to disperse people.

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