Man hit by van in Birmingham after residents take down union flags put up by anti-migrant group | Birmingham

Police are investigating after a man was run over by a van after a group of people pulled down union flags raised by Raise the Color campaigners in Birmingham.

A man in his 30s suffered a broken leg that required surgery. He remained in hospital after the incident in the Birmingham suburb of Stirchley on Thursday evening, police said.

“The van failed to stop at the scene but was recovered from nearby Prince Road and is currently being examined,” West Midlands police said in a statement.

“We are monitoring CCTV and social media footage as we try to establish the full circumstances of what happened.”

The Guardian spoke to three witnesses and Birmingham residents who said they were at the incident on Thursday evening; two of them gave statements to the police.

Residents said around 10 people gathered on Pershore Road, a main street in Stirchley, at around 10pm on Thursday to take down flags raised by the Raise the Colors group earlier in the day.

They claimed men wearing sweaters bearing the band’s logo arrived on the scene and were allegedly “really aggressive” and “looked like they really wanted to fight”.

Raise the Colors has displayed thousands of union and Saint George flags across the UK and has faced criticism for spreading anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Last month Oxfordshire county council issued a legal notice banning the group from displaying the flag, saying staff and residents had been “subject to abuse and threatening behaviour”.

A Stirchley resident said he was “punched” by a man wearing a Raise the Colors hoodie.

Video footage taken by a local resident and shared with the Guardian confirmed this claim and showed the same man removing the face mask from another woman’s face. In the video, the men can be heard calling the others a “fucking disgrace” and “traitors to your own country.”

A resident who was a friend of the run over man said he didn’t realize the man had been shot until he heard a man wearing the Raise the Colors logo say it. “Only [when] One of the men at RTC spoke. “He was saying, ‘Someone was shot,'” he said.

Raise the Colors co-founder Ryan Bridge said in an interview with the BBC that the area had been “taken over” by the “far left”, adding that they appeared to be “there for trouble”. He said he knew nothing about the traffic accident, adding that the group “does not condone any violence.”

The Stirchley resident said his friend was left “seriously injured” by the incident and remained in hospital with him until 3am. “At first he was shot and he was lying there on the ground alone and [we] “We didn’t realize it because we were all in this other harassment,” he said.

“He was too scared to call out because he had been hit and then the truck, the cherry picker, had driven away and he didn’t want to call out in case they came back.”

Another Birmingham resident, who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns for his safety, said men carrying the Raise the Colors logo “confronted us in a very aggressive and abusive manner” after taking down three flags on the main street. The Raise the Colors logo is also on the side of the van, he said.

“The first thing I saw was two men filming, with the Raise the Color logo on their shirts, coming down the street and yelling and abusing us.

“I was pushed, a guy with a stick had to wrestle to protect the pole because they tried to take it away from him. He was very aggressive.”

“It was very scary and they were clearly there to both harass and scare us.”

In a letter to the acting West Midlands police chief, local Labor MP Al Carns said he had been contacted about the incident by “dozens of residents” who described members of Raise the Colors engaging in “harassment, intimidation and physical assault”.

He said the accounts were “disturbing” and wanted to discuss “preventative measures” to prevent a similar incident from recurring.

Management consultant David Clarke, 65, who lives in Stirchley and was at the event on Thursday, said he had repeatedly contacted the police, the local council and Carns to call for tougher action against Raise The Colours.

Clarke, who has been protesting to take down the flags since September, said the incident was shocking but not surprising. “We have been saying for a long time that the Raise the Colors men were a serious threat.”

Brummies United Against Racisma “grassroots community initiative”, has renewed calls for newly elected councilors to take immediate action against Raise the Colour.