A court has heard that Anthony Williams was heard saying “I am the baddest, no-one is as bad as me” on a train the day before a mass stabbing allegedly took place.
Williams, 33, is accused of attempting to murder 10 people on a London-bound train that made an emergency stop at Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, on 1 November last year. He denies 14 counts of attempted murder relating to alleged incidents in Peterborough, on the train and later in London.
The trial at Cambridge Crown Court was told that a passenger contacted British Transport Police after seeing a man behaving erratically on a train the previous night. In a statement read to jurors, Keirah Lee-Oakman said the man appeared to be talking and mumbling to himself before walking through the carriages and making comments including “boom and power”.
She said he repeatedly stated “I haven’t got it”, referred to the devil and behaved in an aggressive and intimidating way. Lee-Oakman told police she felt unsafe and sent a text to British Transport Police.
Officers attended at Stevenage station, but the man moved on to the tracks. The court heard they later decided it was unsafe to continue following him.
Another passenger, Abbie Harrison-Evans, said a man was shouting at the front of the train and playing spooky Halloween music on his phone. She described his behaviour as erratic and said her first impression was that he might be suffering from a mental condition.
Harrison-Evans told jurors that Williams had a black rucksack beside him and repeatedly grabbed it while saying, “I’m going to do it”. She said it appeared he was reaching inside the bag and that she feared he was going to hurt passengers. The court also heard that he alternated between saying “I’m going to do it” and “I cannot do it”.
Her partner, Ethan Daniels, said he heard the man claim that he was “the baddest”.
Williams is accused of trying to kill Raza Aslam, Sachin Balakrishnan, Scott Bletcher, Stephen Crean, Kevin Deely, Jonathan Gjoshe, Scott Green, Michael Paffett, David Presland and Samir Zitouni on the train between Peterborough and Huntingdon.
He is also accused of attempting to murder a teenager on a Docklands Light Railway train in east London during the early hours of 1 November. Prosecutors have said the issue of whether Williams carried out the attacks is not in dispute; jurors must instead consider whether he intended to kill the people involved.
The trial continues.
Sources: BBC News UK.