ELDERLY residents were terrified when thousands of partygoers turned up and began urinating, defecating, taking drugs and having sex in their quiet residential street.
Pride revellers were heading to Brighton Station after the Preston Park concerts when thousands began streaming into Grange Close - a dead end - by mistake.
And then the residents of Nestor Court, home to the elderly, were shocked to look out of their windows and see youngsters snorting drugs, urinating in the road and having sex with each other on the grass.
The residents, mostly aged over-60, made futile attempts to get the revellers to stay out as a constant stream of people, estimated to total 20,000, came into the dead-end for two hours from 10.20pm.
Sue Bond, 64, of Nestor Court tells of how residents, many in their 70s and 80s, headed outside to try to move the revellers on.
She said: “I’ve never seen anything like it there was thousands of people.
“People were making love on the grass - I even had to tell a couple on the steps to my back door to pack it in. People were urinating and opening their bowels. I could have made a fortune selling toilet rolls it was so disgusting.”
Grange Close is located off Preston Road, near Beaconsfield Medical Practice and offers no route through to Brighton station.
Ellen Loughman, 72 also of Nestor Court, went outside with her husband to disperse the crowd.
She said: “On Saturday night I started watching a movie and my neighbour phoned and told me to look out the window. There were loads of youngsters kissing and cuddling on the grass outside. They were urinating all over the flowers, unbelievable, totally unbelievable. Something went wrong somewhere – the stewards didn’t know what they were doing. I’ve lived here for years and this was the worst I’ve ever seen.”
The army of partygoers had just left the nearby Preston Park event in which Britney Spears played to more than 50,000 people on Saturday.
A man, who asked not to be named, said he saw people sniffing lines of drugs off his neighbours’ walls: “I would say somewhere in the region of 20,000 people spilled into Grange Close – it was like a film.
“People were taking drugs on the grass verges and racking up lines of drugs on the entrance to my neighbours’ houses.
“There were barriers put up but they were moved and security were over-whelmed and completely lost control. People were having sex on the grass verges and others were urinating everywhere. We were trying the best to police the people but there was so many people they just weren’t listening to us.”
Chris Jepson from Brighton Pride said: “We are aware that during the egress from Preston Park a small number of people tried to shortcut the main preferred route, but as far as we know most realised the roads were dead ends and backtracked almost immediately. This is backed up by information from event control who monitor the police helicopter footage.
“We recognise that infrastructure dedicated to residents requires ongoing review and we will be looking at this as a key point for our future planning.”
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