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Chelsea striker Samantha Kerr “felt ignored” by Met Police officers after telling them a taxi driver had left her fearing for her life, a jury has heard.<\/p>\n
The Australia international is charged with causing racially aggravated harassment to PC Stephen Lovell by calling him “stupid and white”.<\/p>\n
Ms Kerr and her partner, West Ham midfielder Kristie Mewis, had been for a night out in south-west London and decided to get a taxi home in the early hours of 30 January 2023.<\/p>\n
The driver said he drove the couple to Twickenham police station after one of the passengers was sick in his vehicle, refused to pay the clean-up fee, and smashed the rear window.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Footage of Sam Kerr calling PC Stephen Lovell “stupid and white” was played to the jury on Monday<\/figcaption><\/p>\n\n
PC Lovell first saw Ms Kerr as she crawled through a smashed taxi window outside the police station, Kingston Crown Court was told.<\/p>\n
The women told officers the taxi driver had been “acting in a crazy way” by driving very fast, repeatedly stopping and speeding up again, locking them in the car, and refusing to let them go for about 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
A “heated” discussion about the incident ensued at the station, during which Ms Kerr allegedly became “abusive and insulting” towards PC Lovell. She was captured on a body-worn camera calling him “stupid and white”.<\/p>\n
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) initially ruled that the evidence did not meet the threshold to charge Ms Kerr, but a second statement by PC Lovell made 10 months after his first led to the Met Police charging the striker.<\/p>\n
Giving evidence earlier on Tuesday, PC Lovell denied he had made his later statement “purely to get a criminal charge over the line”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Julia Quenzler<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nPC Stephen Lovell in court on Tuesday<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n\n
Ms Kerr accepts making the “stupid and white” comments, but denies they amount to the charge.<\/p>\n
In a police interview the following day, Ms Kerr, of previous good character, told the officer in charge that she “shouldn’t have been so front-footed” but she had been feeling “very, very threatened”.<\/p>\n
She did not have a lawyer, and told the officer she vomited through the window, “and in that moment onwards the taxi driver became very aggressive” and was driving dangerously.<\/p>\n
“He literally was so dangerous and so scary and he had us both very, very afraid.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Reuters<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nSam Kerr signed for Chelsea in 2019<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n\n
During her police interview, Ms Kerr explained that she could not recall which officer was PC Lovell, but said: “We spoke to three officers and honestly I didn’t feel very helped.<\/p>\n
“We were both very scared, very upset and we didn’t feel like we, I guess, were believed on arrival, and were kind of being \u2013 not forced \u2013 but told ‘just behave, just behave, just behave’.”<\/p>\n
She added: “I just want to add how I didn’t feel we were being heard; I’ve never been in a situation like that where the taxi driver has locked the door and [driven] two females around \u2013 that’s why I felt so angry and so upset.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laura Scott Reporting fromKingston Crown Court EPA Chelsea and Australia star Samantha Kerr is considered to be one of the world’s best strikers Chelsea striker Samantha Kerr “felt ignored” by Met Police officers after telling them a taxi driver had left her fearing for her life, a jury has heard. The Australia international is charged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[41],"tags":[2229,595,1868,16110,1707,599],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48303,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48301\/revisions\/48303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}