According to some witness accounts, a group of around ten Liverpool F.C. football fans, including Shields, engaged in a drunken fracas in the seaside resort in the early hours of the morning. When Georgiev came out of the cafe in which he worked as a barman to investigate, he was knocked down, kicked and punched repeatedly by at least three people. While he was lying on the ground, the questioned witness accounts claim Shields struck him on the head with an object. Shields and three other men, Bradley Thompson, Graham Sankey and Anthony Wilson, were arrested and charged with the attack.