An Asian dentist who had gone to Tesco to buy his lunch was attacked by a white supremacist shouted ‘this is for Lee Rigby’ as he brandished a machete and started hacking him, a court has heard.
Zack Davies, 26, told police he had singled out Dr Sarandev Bhambra because of his skin colour, yelling ‘white supremacy!’ and ‘this is revenge!’ as he attempted to sever his victim’s left hand.
The terrified 24-year-old tried to escape up an aisle of the supermarket, a court heard, flinging products from the shelves to slow down his grinning attacker, only for Davies to launch himself at him again reports Daily Mail.
His ordeal only ended when a former soldier bravely stepped in his way and persuaded Davies to drop his weapons, who later told police: ‘It was me. I did it for Lee Rigby.’
White supremacist and neo-Nazi material was found when police later raided his home, his trial was told.
Items included swastika badges, Combat 18 stickers, a copy of Mein Kampf and a Far Right pamphlet dealing with the death of Drummer Rigby, the soldier hacked to death by Islamic extremists near Woolwich barracks in 2013.
Davies admits attacking Dr Bhambra at the supermarket in Mold, North Wales because he was Asian, but denies attempted murder.
Yesterday Mold Crown Court heard the victim’s account of the frightening attack which left him with life-changing injuries.
‘I am extremely lucky to be alive,’ the trainee dentist, who had only graduated a few months earlier, said in a police interview.
‘I thought I was going to die. I was horrified.’
Dr Bhambra, from Leeds, was working two days a week at the surgery in Mold and had gone to Tesco to buy lunch on January 14.
Instead, a ‘grinning’ Davies came at him with a machete and a claw hammer, shouting ‘white, white, white’ and ‘white power’ and hacking at his head, hand and back.