Police say a lone Norwegian tourist has cut short a Christmas holiday after he was apparently attacked by up to eight people on a popular Melbourne beach last week.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old suffered a broken arm and facial injuries in the alleged assault and has since flown home.<\/p>\n
His phone was also thrown into the ocean during the incident, which was witnessed by a large number of bystanders at St Kilda Pier at lunchtime last Thursday.<\/p>\n
Police say the alleged offenders then fled the scene.<\/p>\n
Detective Senior Constable Jesse Coppel said the man had been enjoying the summer weather when the group accused him of taking photos of people at the pier.<\/p>\n
“The information we have indicates that people have seen the contents of his phone prior to it being destroyed and that there was nothing of that nature on the phone,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It seems to me as if they’ve used that as an excuse to confront this man and then when it’s not followed through, they’ve assaulted him anyway.”<\/p>\n
Police on Wednesday released the images of three men and a woman \u2014 all in their early 20s or late teens \u2014 that they alleged were “primary offenders” they wished to speak to.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Police on Wednesday released the images of four people they wish to speak with. (Supplied: Victoria Police)<\/p>\n
The woman is described as having distinctive tattoos on her chest, leg and arm, while the men range from 165 to 175 centimetres in height and each have short dark hair.<\/p>\n
Constable Coppel said police had been unable to contact the 34-year-old in the week since the alleged attack and said the incident did not belong in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
“It’s quite disgusting behaviour,” he said.<\/p>\n
“People come to see St Kilda. They come to see the beach. They come to see the sights.<\/p>\n
“They deserve to be safe on the beach, but people behaving in this manner \u2014 it’s deplorable. It doesn’t belong here.”<\/p>\n
Anyone who saw or filmed the incident is encouraged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police say a lone Norwegian tourist has cut short a Christmas holiday after he was apparently attacked by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[44036,64,63,5315,44,1158,199665,6771],"class_list":["post-368267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-alleged-assault","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-investigation","tag-news","tag-police","tag-st-kilda-pier","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}