One user tweeted: “There's
a clown on Brunel campus, don't think I'm ever leaving my flat again”,
while another one said: “Oh my, killer
clown terrorising Brunel students”.
James Liuton, 23, Science student at Brunel also said he was
‘terrified’ to hear the news on
social media: “I was shocked to hear
about the clown prank at my university. It was all over Facebook and everyone
was freaking out! I thought it was a made-up joke to begin with, because I had
heard about those pranks before, but then when I saw Snapchat posts and tweets
I was scared indeed.”
Terry Vass, Security operations Manager at Brunel University
has announced that “this is a prank that
has come over from abroad and it is happening all over the UK now, where
someone jumps out in a clown suit to scare people.’’
The ‘Clown craze’ also knows as the ‘Killer Clown trend’ has
been imported from the United States and it sees pranksters wearing scary clown
costumes and masks and usually holding weapons in an attempt to try and
terrorise the public. There have already been several sightings of clown
pranksters around schools, parking lots and houses in London, Leeds and Essex.
Mr Vass also added that the clown prankster at Brunel
University “could have been holding a
real chainsaw, but if it was real, it unlikely had the chain, which is the
sharp part, attached. The chainsaw was used more to make noise.”
The Brunel University Security Team has informed students and
staff that they “can be assured we are
doing our best to find this person with the help of CCTV and you have nothing
to worry about on campus.”