Chelsea star Kerr claims police ignored her after 'scary' row with taxi driver / Photo: HENRY NICHOLLS - AFP
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Chelsea star Kerr claims police ignored her after 'scary' row with taxi driver
Chelsea striker Sam Kerr claimed she was ignored by police officers after telling them a taxi driver left the Australian fearing for her life, a court heard on Tuesday.
Kerr is on trial charged with causing racially aggravated harassment to police officer Stephen Lovell during an incident in south-west London in the early hours of January 30, 2023.
Lovell first saw Kerr that evening as she crawled through a smashed taxi window outside Twickenham Police Station, Kingston Crown Court was told.
The taxi driver had driven Kerr and her partner, West Ham midfielder Kristie Mewis, to the police station to complain that they had refused to pay clean-up costs after one of them was sick, and that one had smashed the vehicle's rear window.
Kerr said the 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.
A "heated" discussion about the incident ensued between Kerr and the police, during which the 31-year-old allegedly became "abusive and insulting" towards Lovell, calling him "stupid and white".
During questioning by prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones, Lovell told the jury that Kerr's words had made him feel "belittled and upset".
Kerr, who joined Women's Super League champions Chelsea in 2020, accepts making the comments, but denies that they amount to the charge.
In a police interview the following day, Kerr told the officer in charge that "I shouldn't have been so front-footed".
But she added "in that moment I was feeling very threatened because of one: How I was being treated, and two: For my life in that car".
"I was in a taxi and I did vomit outside the window, and in that moment onwards the taxi driver became very aggressive and driving very dangerous, and had us both very scared.
"I actually pressed the emergency thing on my phone and spoke to someone and he (the driver) would not return us, drop us off - we wanted to pay whatever it was. He said we weren't going to pay but that is not true at all.
"He literally was so dangerous and so scary and he had us both very afraid."
Kerr said it was "very confronting" to only speak to three male officers despite just being with "a very dangerous man", adding that she "definitely" would have preferred to speak with a woman in that situation.
During her police interview, Kerr claimed she could not recall which officer was Lovell, but said: "We spoke to three officers and honestly I didn't feel very helped.
"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 - not forced - but told just behave."
G.Lenaerts --JdB
