Salon owner Jonny Long is “devastated” by a jogger repeatedly fouling his premises. 

A business on the King’s Road has now twice been affected by a bizarre crime that the owner calls “disgusting”.

Jonny Long, owner of Lockonego on the King’s Road, has asked The Chelsea Citizen to help find a man who has twice defecated on the wall of his business.

“I can’t believe what’s happened,” he told The Citizen.

Mr Long, who has owned the salon for 21 years, first found faeces on his wall last Thursday (5 Nov), and assumed it was a dog with a careless walker. However, CCTV from neighbouring restaurant Mestizo clearly shows a jogger stop in the passage, pull down his shorts, and defecate against the wall before restarting his fitness tracker and jogging on.

“I cleaned it,” he added, pointing out the patch of wall in question, just between Lockonego and Park Walk School. “Because we are right next to a school and I didn’t want any children near it.”

He reported the incident to the police, and was told to provide the video evidence. He did that, but heard nothing further.

Now, a week later, the same thing has happened again.

“I came in this morning, same thing down the side of the building,” Mr Long said. “I was like, it can’t be.”

He asked for Mestizo’s CCTV again, and saw that the same man had committed the same gross act, a couple of metres from the first incident. He approaches from a different direction but once again stops in Lamont Road Passage in SW10, defecates against the wall, pulls up his shorts up and jogs on.

Mr Long added that he didn’t recognise the man, and had no reason to believe he had any grudge against his business.

“If he had hair, I’d think it might be over a bad haircut,” he joked. “I don’t know. I don’t understand it. I’ve been in this area 21 years, we really support the local area. That’s why I called The Citizen straight away.”

He called on The Citizen to track down this man after being unable to pass on footage to the police. He was visited by two officers on Saturday after the first incident, who said they would send a link to submit the footage, but he says that link never arrived. He said that he was told the second incident could not be responded to quickly as police were dealing with issues arising from the global Microsoft outage.

Mr Long said he was “fuming” over the incident, adding: “This end of the King’s Road, it’s like a village. I know all the people in every shop. We speak, we talk, we protect each other, we try and help each other. For me, it’s a sign of the times, people think they can just do things without consequences.”

“Consequences” is exactly what Mr Long is looking for. He told The Citizen that while one incident could be explained away as a health issue or bizarre one-off, two was impossible to ignore.

“It’s literally one or two seconds of defecation down the side, pulls his trousers up, hasn’t wiped, hasn’t cleaned, and carries on running. This is an alley that kids play in, dogs and animals run up and down.”

In just the short time The Citizen was speaking with Mr Long, several people passed by the site, including parents with babies in prams or wandering toddlers, people walking their dogs, and travellers with trundle-trolleys which came dangerously close to the stain.

“I’m devastated,” Mr Long said. “It’s disgusting. I need The Citizen to help, I think the whole area does.”

No other businesses in the area have reported any similar incidents to The Citizen or to Mr Long himself after he made the footage known.

“I want the police to get involved,” he said. “I want this man to be named and shamed. And I want an apology. And I want somebody to explain what the hell’s happening, because it’s disgusting at the best of times.”

Find the Citizen‘s chat with Mr Long here:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

If anyone has information about the culprit, please contact our newsdesk by email at editor@thechelseacitizen.com