News
Elaine McCallig
Oct 20, 2021
The woman who drove her Range Rover into Insulate Britainprotesters in a viral video has spoken out.
Essex mum Sherrilyn Speid, 34, was filmed driving into protesters who refused to get out of the way as she tried to take her son to school.
The mental health specialist told The Sun that she didn’t hit them, she “nudged them slowly along the road” as a “scare tactic” in the hopes they would move.
She said she’s upset that she lost her temper, but explained that she has an important job in which people in distress were waiting to see her.
Speid also highlighted that her son is in Year 7, his first year at secondary school, and she doesn’t want him to miss out on any more school given the amount of time he had off during the pandemic.
“I shouldn’t have let the anger get the better of me but they pushed me to the edge,” she told the paper. “What they’re doing is wrong. They’re not peaceful, they’re obstructive and they’re rude.
“We want to have a nice planet for our children’s children, which I support — but they’re doing more damage than good. They should be protesting outside parliament and to the government and not interrupting people’s lives."
Speaking to MailOnline, she said she was just “standing up for her son”.
“I just wanted to get him to school,” she said.
In the video, Speid is seen getting out of the 4x4 before storming towards the protesters sitting in front of her car before ripping their Insulate Britain sign out of their hands.
“I’m not joking, I need to get my son to school. Move out of the way now,” she fumed.
She made her way back to the driver’s side of the car and shouted “my son is 11 and he needs to get to school and I need to get to work” as her son peeked out from the passenger side.
She then began to drive her car into the two protesters sitting on the road. One of them can be heard screaming “ow” as the car pushes them a few inches along the road.
Another protester signals for her to stop as a bystander can be heard shouting: “Get out of the f*cking road then.”
This isn’t the first time Insulate Britain protesters have been confronted by angry drivers.
One such video from LBC, viewed over 800,000 times, shows another driver nudging a protester with his car before a different motorist drags one of the protesters out of the way.
Another shocking video shows a furious driver tying a protester to a railing with an Insulate Britain banner.
The environmental activists, who want the government to take action on home insulation, have also been rinsed by TV hosts, including Good Morning Britain’s Richard Madeley who slammed the protests as “ludicrous”.
After blocking major roads for 14 days over a five-week campaign and burning the High Court injunctions ordering them to stop, the eco-warriors have paused their “civil resistance” until 25 October.
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