Firearms officers found a realistic-looking gel blaster toy gun in a car after nightclub door staff reported having pellets fired at them as it drove by.
Police bodycam footage showed an officer telling the occupants their purple-coloured toy “looks like a firearm to me” and that staff at Red Room, in Broadway, Peterborough would have been unable to tell it was not a real gun.
Pellets were fired towards a crowd of people outside the nightclub, hitting one member of staff in the back of the head and another in the face.
Two 20-year-old men were arrested in the early hours of 14 July 2023 on Dogsthorpe Road and later pleaded guilty to two counts of common assault.
They were ordered to carry out 80 hours of unpaid work at Peterborough Crown Court, and the investigating officer said after their sentencing the pair were “quite naive about their actions being criminal”.
