A £10,000 reward has been offered to catch a thug who left a young woman scarred for life after an unprovoked attack in Edgware.

Desperate dental nurse Chanelle O'Malley had to pick up her teeth from the ground following the savage beating, in which her jaw was broken in two places, on May 24 last year.

The then 20-year-old had caught a night bus home following a night out with friends in Camden when a man described as "big and tall" began abusing them.

She said: “When we got on the bus we were being quite loud. He started making racist comments and went on for a while until I told him to shut up.

“He was calling my friends 'Jewish princesses' and saying 'Shut up you Jews'.

“He was with three or four friends and they were laughing at him. After a while he shut up.”

The group got off the bus a stop before Chanelle and her friends, but trouble flared again when the attacker spotted them getting into a cab outside Edgware Station.

The Pembroke Place resident said: “My friends were already in the cab and I heard a noise behind me and turned around. He grabbed me by the neck and punched me in the face.

“I don't remember anything after that, until I woke up on the floor. I had been unconscious for a couple of minutes. I remember picking my teeth off the floor.

“My friends were really shocked. One of them says she is still having nightmares and keeps waking up with a picture of me when I was all cut open. I'm scared he could do this again.”

Chanelle was taken to hospital and needed an operation to put a metal plate and screws in her fractured jaw, and needed 15 stitches in her forehead and nine in her lip.

Her injuries were so severe her sister Hayley, 26, fainted when she saw them.

Chanelle added: “I was so shaken up after it happened, I was quite scared and wouldn't go out of the house at first.

“It took a while to get the courage up to leave the house, but even now if someone is running for a bus behind me I will look around to check. I get a bit frightened.

“When I'm out my mum rings me every hour to make sure I'm okay. I always make sure I go home with someone and we always get a cab, I don't get the nightbus. It would mean a lot to catch him.”

Detective Constable Aileen Davie said police had offered the reward in the hope of getting one of the attacker's friends to come forward and identify him.

She said: “The level of violence displayed in this attack on a defenceless 20-year-old is nothing short of extreme. This man will offend again.

"The behaviour this thug displayed is not only abhorrent, but something which should not be tolerated in a modern and civilised society.”

Anyone with information about the attack is asked to call DC Davies on 0208 733 4595, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.