Jana Silgale was celebrating her sister’s hen do in Krakow, Poland, when she and two others were pepper sprayed in the face by a group of men as they headed to a nightclub
A mum who says she was ‘pepper sprayed’ while on a hen do in Poland says the scary experience has put her off ever going back to the country again. Jana Silgale had travelled to Krakow on Thursday with five other women for her younger sister’s celebration ahead of her marriage.
On Saturday, the group had been for bottomless brunch before heading on a bar crawl across the city centre. The hen party then decided to check out the “best nightclub in Krakow,” when on their way to the club Jana, 33, claims they were pepper sprayed by a man.
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She said: “The last bar we had been in we didn’t really like so we decided to end the tour there and we Googled what the best night club was in Poland and we went to go there on our way home, because it was on the way.
“We were walking through the main square [Rynek, Glowny], I was on Google Maps on my phone, there was three of us, including my sister, walking ahead of everyone else.
“A group of four or five men approached us talking in another language, one of them put his arm on my sister’s shoulder. We told them we didn’t understand what they were saying to us. Then all of a sudden there was a spraying noise.”
She told the Liverpool Echo: “It looked like it had come from a water gun, it didn’t burn straight away, we didn’t know what had happened, then next thing it was burning our eyes, nose, mouth, hands, everywhere.
“We couldn’t open our eyes. We didn’t know we had been pepper sprayed straight away, we thought it was acid at first, I thought I was going to go blind.”
Jana told of her terror during random attack, adding: “We were in a different country, we didn’t know how to get home or how to go to police. It was shocking, so so scary.
“Thankfully, the three who were walking behind didn’t get pepper sprayed and they managed to get me, my sister and the other girl we were with to the nearest McDonald’s to try and get water in our eyes. My sister was shouting ‘my eyes.’
“Nobody did anything to help us, it was only around 11pm in the main square and nobody did anything. We were six girls by ourselves, we’d only had a couple of drinks, we went to have a good time and all we had said to them was for them to leave us alone.”
The hen party flew back to Liverpool the next day and have sworn never to return to the Polish city. Jana said: “It was our first time in Poland and probably the last.
“We will never go back. We didn’t even want to buy any fridge magnets or anything to remember the trip by. People need to be warned about what happened to us, it was shocking.”
