Passengers describe train behaviour before Huntingdon stabbing trial

A passenger told a court that Anthony Williams said “I am the baddest, no-one is as bad as me” on a train the night before a stabbing attack on a London-bound service, as his trial at Cambridge Crown Court continued.

Williams, 33, denies 14 counts of attempted murder relating to events in Peterborough and London and on the train between Peterborough and Huntingdon on 1 November last year. The trial has heard that carrying out the attacks is not in dispute; jurors must decide whether he intended to kill the people he is accused of trying to murder.

The court heard that passenger Keirah Lee-Oakman reported a man behaving erratically to British Transport Police on the night of 31 October. In a statement read to jurors, she said he walked through the carriages, saying “boom and power” and referring to the devil. She described his manner as “aggressive and intimidating” and said she felt unsafe.

Police attended at Stevenage station, but the man dropped onto the tracks. Officers later decided it was unsafe to continue following him, the court heard.

Another passenger, Ethan Daniels, said the man declared himself “the baddest”. Daniels’s partner, Abbie Harrison-Evans, told the court she saw him repeatedly grab a black rucksack and say, “I’m going to do it”. She said she feared he was about to hurt passengers.

Williams is accused of attempting to murder 10 people on the train that made an emergency stop at Huntingdon on 1 November. He is also accused of trying to kill three people in Peterborough the previous evening and a teenager on a Docklands Light Railway train in east London in the early hours of 1 November.

The trial is continuing.