A 24-year old man was stabbed to death following an argument over the cheque at a coffee shop in Heliopolis last night, four eye witnesses said.
The deceased, Mahmoud Bayoumi, and two assailants who are waiters at Keif café in Nozha street, were at the coffee shop during the AFCON final match between Egypt and Cameron. When the match was over, the waiters told everyone at the café that no one will leave the coffee shop until each and every one pays their bill.
"After the match was over, they locked a small glass door while we were upstairs at the café. Bayoumi, the deceased, opposed this conduct, and kept saying that locking customers inside the place is unacceptable and is an act of thuggery," 27-year-old eye-witness Passant Thapet recounted, adding that Bayoumi was saying that it was getting late and he still had to drive his fiancée home.
Bayoumi was born in Mansoura and graduated in 2015 with a Bachelor's degree in Marketing from the British University in Egypt.
Thapet, an assistant director, added that after the verbal argument arose between Bayoumi and the waiters, the manager showed up and asked the waiters to let Bayoumi leave. Bayoumi then told the manager: "Do I have to make a huge fight to leave?"
"Then, I heard the manager telling him: you haven't seen any fights yet," Thapet told Egypt Independent with a shocked tone in her voice. "We were all worried that this fight would get messier, but murder..?!"
"He actually died.. It's beyond me."
"Two men followed Bayoumi downstairs. I followed them too. His (Bayoumi) white shirt was all full of blood. They hit him with a blue metal chair, then with a belt, and stabbed him repeatedly in his stomach with a metal object," she added.
According to Thapet, one of the assailants escaped from the coffee shop soon after stabbing Bayoumi.
"We saw him changing his shirt upstairs, as it was also full of blood. They were trying to get him to escape and make it seem as if it was just a street fight," she explained.
Reem Tarek, another one of the witnesses who were at the coffee shop last night described the waiter as "rude and disrespectful" even before the crime took place.
"After the match was over, we heard from all the way upstairs shouting and glass breaking, we didn’t know what was happening until we saw them leaving .. and two men were following Bayoumi and his fiancée," 24-year-old Tarek said.
Chairs were thrown and Bayoumi was hit with a glass bottle on his head, she recounted.
"The girl (his fiancée) kept shouting hysterically enough! Enough! But they were hitting him even harder," Tarek said.
The police then came and arrested some of the people working at the café; but it is not yet known if the assailant was one of them, Tarek said.
The shouting and screaming was loud enough to grab the attention of Fouad Wagih, the third witness, from the coffee shop next door. In the street, Wagih heard a girl screaming extremely loud as he rushed over to figure out what was happening.
Wagih said that he called the police, who came in the end and arrested some of the workers in the café, while he accompanied Bayoumi to the hospital. They initially went to Palestine hospital, then to Cleopatra hospital, due to his critical condition.
"I saw the stabs myself, one in his stomach and another one in his chest. The one in the chest hit the lungs deep, it caused his death," Wagih said. Cleopatra hospital validated Waguih's claims.
"I can't comprehend what I saw untill now, I don’t know what to say, " Wagih added.
Egypt Independent tried to reach Osama El Naggar, the coffee shop's manager, but he was unavailable for a comment.
Based on investigations, the public prosector's office has now announced the same scenario recounted by the witnesses and is currently working to determine the identity of the assailants, who fled the crime scene.
