British bar owner faces deportation

TRACEY SHELTON David Finch’s Broken Bricks bar on Street 130 was seized by police on May 5 following an assault on a female worker.

Written by Nguon Sovan
Friday, 16 May 2008

Courtesy of Phnom Penh post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

British bar owner arrested earlier this month after a fight with one of his female staff that left the woman beaten unconscious is facing assault charges and the likely expulsion from Cambodia, police say.

David Finch, whose bizarrely decorated Broken Bricks bar had emerged as one of the more talked about establishments on Phnom Penh’s expatriate drinking scene, was seized May 5 by police after he allegedly assaulted his staff member.

“The victim was beaten unconscious and her left arm was twisted,” said Chhit Vuthy, deputy chief of the Phsar Kandal I Police Department, adding that police were forced to rescue Finch, 42, from an angry crowd of onlookers who attacked him after the assault.

“He was beaten and received facial injuries. Fortunately, our police arrived on time, otherwise he would have been beaten to death,” Vuthy said.

Cambodia’s Deputy Commissioner of National Police, Sok Phal, told the Post that Finch is currently being held by the immigration police while the Ministry of Interior decides whether he will be expelled from Cambodia.

Neighbors around Finch’s Broken Bricks said that he frequently argued loudly with his staff and that the bar had become a nuisance.

“He decorated his bar like a haunted house,” said 66-year-old Sok Huong, who said his home shares a wall with the Broken Bricks bar.

“Some nights, when we were sleeping, there was the sound of arguments from the bar between the man and the staff and sometimes he threw glasses or bottles at the front of my house, leaving fragments scattered on the ground.”