A court heard that a Tube driver enticed a female passenger into his cab and sexually attacked her while smelling like cannabis.
Before stroking her thigh and making sexual comments, Nathaniel Cummings-Stewart allegedly requested her to join him by the driver’s seat.
The 46-year-old from Brent, north London, is accused of turning off the lights in the driver’s cab, proposing he return to her hotel to ‘Netflix and chill,’ and smelled like he’d been consuming cannabis recently.
Cummings-Stewart has denied a single count of sexual assault after he was reported to the British Transport Police.
The woman had traveled to London with a friend for a long weekend and was sleeping at a hotel near Waterloo, according to jurors at Inner London Crown Court.
She went to Wembley Boxpark to meet up with friends on August 21, 2020, and then returned to Central London later that evening.
To avoid missing the last train, the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was walked to the nearest station by a friend shortly after midnight to board the Jubilee line.
Cummings-Stewart approached her after she arrived and said, “Which station are you going to?” before inviting her inside the driver’s cab, according to the court.
Because she was unfamiliar with London, she felt he was someone ‘to be trusted’ because he was dressed in a TfL outfit, she told the court.
‘It was powerful, it must have been recent [that he’d been smoking],’ she stated to the jurors, claiming that he smelled like cannabis.
She claimed she sat next to him while he operated the train’s controls.
He questioned her questions about her travel to London, the location of her accommodation, and asked her to remove her Covid-19 mask throughout the drive to Waterloo, she claims.
He allegedly ‘shut out the lights, closed the blinds, and locked the door’ before suggesting that he would come to her hotel when his work ended in two hours, according to the woman.
He also told her he wanted to shower with her and ‘Netflix and chill’ with her before grabbing her phone and demanding she take his number, according to the court.
The woman told jurors that she felt ‘uncomfortable’ and declined to reveal her own phone number, instead telling him she was 19, before messaging her buddy, which was unsuccessful owing to signal problems.
He reached over to give her a high five while they were traveling between Tube stations, she alleged, before touching her upper thigh.
The woman claimed that when she arrived at Waterloo station, she maintained that it was her stop and that she exited by a side door.
‘My heart was racing really, really fast; as soon as I got out of the platform, I was jogging, my heart was hammering,’ she added of her reaction to the incident.
She stated she told her mother about it a few days later and reported him to TfL Customer Services.
Jurors heard a recording of her calling him “inappropriate” and said, “I felt really terrified, I didn’t know what was going to happen, and I genuinely did fear for what was going to happen.”
‘She was sat at the table, I was cooking, I believe, and I realized something was wrong, she’s my daughter,’ her mother testified emotionally.
‘I could see she wanted to say something to me.’ Her whole posture, the way she looked, the way she was looking at me. It was brought up by her. She said she needed to speak with me.
‘My gut feeling was something had happened with a man and she’s going to tell me something that I don’t want to hear. She then tried to explain what happened.
‘From what I can remember she said something had happened on the Tube and she said a man touched her. The first thing I asked her was ‘were you raped’ because that’s my first fear, and she broke down and cried..’
She continued: ‘She then said he said to her where is she staying, she said where she was staying and what she was doing in London, he then suggested that he could come back to the hotel with her to have sex and he would shower off and no one would know.
‘She then said she was so scared she told him he was younger than her age, hoping that would scare him off and he would leave her alone. He took her phone and put his number in her phone and told her to call him.’
Cummings-Stewart has denied the allegation and claimed that he first approached the woman because she looked like his sister, and invited her into the cockpit because she appeared ‘distressed’.
He claimed that she told him she was being followed, which the woman told jurors ‘was not true at all’.
Under Transport for London guidance, drivers are not permitted to allow passengers into the cockpit before contacting controls or a manager.
During his police interview, Cummings-Stewart said he ‘overlooked’ that guidance but had wanted to ensure her protection.
He also denied smoking cannabis or consuming any alcohol or drugs whilst driving the train.
The trial continues.