A STUDENT who attended a Sophie Lancaster Foundation benefit gig found himself subject to a hate crime only a day later.

Darius Oliver is a supporter of the charity formed in the name of Haslingden teenager, Sophie Lancaster, after she was murdered in 2007 for dressing like a ‘goth’.

Darius, 26, attended the event at the Sir Charles Napier pub in Blackburn on Saturday but said he was confronted in the town centre the next day. He said: “I was walking in Northgate and a group of men and a woman started making comments about how I was dressed.

“They started calling me dracula and freak – names like that. I thought the best way to deal with it was just to ignore them but then the woman, about 19 or 20, skipped in front of me. All of a sudden, she thumped me in the face.

“The men she was with were saying to her, ‘Why did you do that?’ and she was just laughing and saying it was funny.”

Darius reported the incident, which happened around 7pm, to police who told him they would treat the assault as a hate crime.

Kate Conboy-Greenwood, of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, said: “Darius has been a long-term supporter of ours and we are all really sad and outraged this happened to him.

“What happened to Sophie wasn’t a one-off.”

Blackburn College student Darius, who is studying to be an accountant, said: “It’s disgusting that even after everything that happened to Sophie, people are still being judged on the way they choose to dress.

“It’s sad that people who belong to a subculture feel they can’t walk the streets of their own town without being called names or being at risk.”

A police spokesman confirmed they were investigating the assault.