A man jumped on a primary school worker’s motorbike and grabbed her hips while she was waiting in traffic in Manchester city centre, prompting her to slap him across the face.
Ellie, a 32-year-old from Salford who has not given her surname, was riding along Oldham Street when the man ran from the pavement and climbed on to the back of her bright green Kawasaki ER-6F.
Footage captured by her friend Charlotte’s helmet camera shows Ellie dressed in black and wearing a helmet as she waits at the lights. As traffic begins to move, the man, wearing blue jeans and a grey jacket, mounts the bike in front of passers-by.
He steadies himself before placing his hands on Ellie’s hips. She immediately shouts and strikes him with her right hand, then holds out her palm in apparent disbelief.
The man grabs his ear before jogging back towards a bar, where his friends can be seen laughing. Ellie then looks towards the group and shakes her head.
At the next set of lights, she tells Charlotte: “I am shaking.”
Ellie later said her “survival instincts” took over when the man got on to the motorcycle.
“Never would have happened if I was with some of the guys,” she said. “A man jumping onto a woman’s bike without consent is weird.
“I was so focused on not dropping the bike I genuinely didn’t even process how inappropriate the whole thing was until afterwards.
“Gave him a good whack though, so at least the survival instincts kicked in.”
She shared the footage online with the caption: “Someone come get their grandad. He’s out here touching women and bikes.” The video received more than 387,000 likes.
One viewer wrote: “He wouldn’t do that to a man.” Another described it as “getting assaulted in broad daylight”, while a further commenter criticised the men seen laughing in the background.
