If you're a new bar or restaurant opening in east London, what do you do when a stabbing victim walks into your establishment? Do you: a) call emergency services, b) take a picture of your bloodstained floor or c) tweet sarcastically about the whole incident? If you're the staff at the Bonneville E5, a new bar and restaurant in Lower Clapton, you do all of the above. 

The business, which describes itself as "Hackney's latest and greatest bar and restaurant", was not too pleased when a bleeding man walked onto its premises during its launch party.

"CSI Clapton Due to events on Lower Clapton Road this evening, we will unfortunately have to close #WelcomeToHackney," it tweeted from the @BonnevilleE5 account, along with a picture of blood on the restaurant floor. 

"Some kid got stabbed over the road and decided to run into ours," it explained in a later tweet. "Great look for our first week."

The tweets were later deleted, but there are still screenshots floating around Twitter:

Understandably, people have been pretty outraged by the whole thing:

Others have blasted the tweets as just more proof that gentrification is sending the area down the drain:

Many have called for a boycott of the establishment. The Bonneville has since issued an apology on Twitter.  "After last night's events, we would like to apologise profusely for the comments on Twitter, which were of course very insensitive and have now been removed," the business states.

It explained that the stab victim, who was in his late 20s, entered the bar during the launch party and acted "very aggressively" to staff and was "uncooperative" when emergency services was called. The business states that it was "a very frightening experience for all involved and bad judgement was used in the comment."

Some have criticised this apology as an exercise in victim-blaming:

Bonneville owner Ruairi Gilles told London24 that the person who sent the tweets was not a permanent member of staff, "but we obviously gave him the ability to tweet so we take full responsibility". 

He defends himself from accusations that his new business is trying to muscle in on the rapidly gentrifying area. "People have told us to leave Hackney," he says. "We are Londoners, I’ve lived in Clapton for a year-and-a-half, in Hackney for seven years before that and Lewisham before that. We like the area and we’re not just trying to cash in on it."