Victims' voices: 'I had 100% confidence the riots wouldn't happen on our street'

Siva Kandiah, 39, shopkeeper, Clarence Road Convenience Store (now known as Siva's shop), Hackney, has been trading for 11 years: "It was a Monday, 8th of 8th around 2.30[pm], we hear the high street is shutting, so I said: 'Why should I, you know, stay here?' Better go home. I've got 100% confidence it [the disturbances] will just never happen on our street. "I was watching the telly … Later on it's 7.30 and they were showing Clarence Road. Sky and BBC live shows us the shop was broken in [to]. "The next morning I come back … My shop was completely open, the shop was open, lights on, and the shop was mashed up completely top to bottom, from ceiling to electric wire … You should ask what they left for me. "I cried that day, Tuesday morning, cried and I just went home. I thought no more retailing. "If you take stuff it's different, but you take stuff … completely destroy the shop … I'm an individual man, you don't need to come to attack me on any point, because I don't do anything bad. "We bought [the store] as a paper shop, small paper card shop, so I built this shop up as a convenience store so it's just like this is your baby and you just work for it, 11 years and you've worked and somebody mash [it] up in 11 hours. "I never had contents insurance either … I lost almost £87,000. I had [a] £2,000 overdraft, now I've gone up to [a] £20,000 overdraft … It's hard to recover. I had to fix the shop back within three weeks … 15 of us worked [to do it] … Didn't even sleep. "Without people I couldn't [re]open this shop at all, at any point, because the government only gave me two grand so far … Only just gave me two grand after three months. The community, you know, set up a website called helpsiva.com , and they collect almost, within two weeks, £30,000. Thank God the people supported me, otherwise I'd be probably in the street. "There is a reason for things, they say … God will punish them, that's all I can say. I believe [in] karma."