A man ran through my house party covered in blood

We were having quite a late party. It must have been around 4am. The day before London was the hottest it had been all year, so this had put everyone in a good mood. It was late enough that I didn’t have too much of an idea what was going on, but seeing a man covered in blood running through our garden isn’t something I’d forget.

It was a pretty big one. Probably about 20-30 people. Some were in the house and some were outside. I live close to Clapham, but I would usually say Brixton. Lots of people from our road had come round. The garden fences are all quite low, so we sometimes climb over into each other’s gardens. It’s nothing unusual.

We didn’t hear any gunshots or sirens. It all happened without warning. A man climbed over the garden fence completely covered in blood, but he wasn’t someone we recognised. Even from a distance it was obvious there was blood. At first he ran towards the house, probably hoping to try and run through onto the street. He was running away from something. We waved our hands and shouted “no, no, no” at the man, trying to get him to keep away. We didn’t know what else to do. He must have looked through the window and seen the number of people inside. Instead the man decided to jump over the next fence.

The guys next door appeared over the next fence asking if we’d seen what happened. The running man had got blood all over their walls and floor. It was all a bit mad, but it got weirder.

There was a bang on the door. We were freaking out, obviously. A guy walks in wearing a multicoloured donkey mask with the words “Party Animal” on it. I realised it was one of our neighbours, Mike, clearly a bit off his nut. He told us the police were out there with sub-machine guns. We looked out and there they were. He’d been talking to the police and was interviewed dressed like that.

We told him the story about the man covered in blood climbing over the fence. His first response was that it was probably just one of my mad mates. In this case it wasn’t. We later discovered that somebody had been shooting at the police. Thankfully nobody was hurt.

At this point we started asking some people to leave and tried to wind the party down. The police said it wasn’t possible for anyone to go out the front door, so we just told our friends to leave over the back and hop fences.

As they’re climbing over, this big spotlight shoots down from the sky from a police helicopter above our house. From a loudspeaker one of the officers shouted “What are you doing?” in a stern voice. All they could shout back was “We’re going home!”. At this point it was too much. It was almost like it wasn’t happening because it was so ridiculous.

In the morning I heard a loud bang on the door. My first thought was that it was the police and that I had to do some tidying.  I quickly put on a towel and tried to make sure the house wasn’t a wreck, but my housemate opened the door and police Alsatians ran straight in. They were digging in the garden. Apparently they were looking for a gun.

Even now I don’t know why the man was covered in blood. I don’t think this kind of thing happens in Clapham very often. I don’t think this happens anywhere.

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As told to Jack Cummings. Names have been changed and left out at the request of those who were at the party.

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