The ordeal was filmed by the perpetrators and posted to social media. In the footage, you can see a young woman sawing through a gate before the video cuts to her spray painting 2 aircraft with orange material, using a fire extinguisher. The video then shows 2 young women sitting in front of the defaced planes hugging each other with "Just Stop Oil" t-shirts on.
The airport they broke into turned out to be London Stansted Airport, which confirmed that Swift's jet was not at that location at the time of the incident. The 2 perpetrators were arrested in a private area of the airport on suspicion of criminal damage and interference with the use or operation of national infrastructure, Fox News reports.
The vandals had uploaded the video themselves which was reposted by Just Stop Oil. The organization named the 2 individuals as Jennifer Kowalski, 28, and Cole Macdonald, 22, and said they were protesting against fossil fuels and. They demanded that governments internationally commit to ending "extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030." The group also claimed that Swift's jet had landed at Stansted Airport "mere hours before," something the airport was unable to verify.
Macdonald claimed in a statement that rich people are accruing wealth to the detriment of others, which is "destroying the conditions necessary to support human life in a rapidly accelerating never-ending ‘cruel summer,’" referencing Taylor Swift’s hit 2019 song Cruel Summer.
Other video footage captured by the duo shows one of the vandals saying, "I've just sprayed 2 private jets orange. While people are starving, the elite and the rich fly thousands and thousands of feet in the air above us all. Billionaires are not untouchable."
