The 19-year-old female Oxford student was on her way home from a night out in the town's Cowley neighborhood. She passed by an abandoned bingo hall when a man approached her, speaking with a foreign accent. She quickly left the area of the bingo hall, but he followed her to Cumberland Road, where the assault occurred. The woman managed to escape before any “serious” damage was done.

She described the assaulter as an Asian man in his late twenties or early thirties, with a shaved head. The Oxford University Student Union suggests that students always carry an attack alarm, never return home alone, and only walk the safe streets as much as possible.