A FOUL-mouthed dad who verbally abused two carers on a train journey – one racially – and then assaulted five police officers when he was arrested a month later has been jailed for a year.
Alex Steventon, 39, was travelling with his partner and children on a packed northbound Virgin Trains service on August 9 when they vacated an area earmarked for disabled people to accommodate a woman requiring 24-hour assistance.
That acted as the trigger for Steventon to unleash a “wall of abuse”, Carlisle Crown Court heard today (THURS). He told one of the woman’s carers – believed to be a white South African – to shut her “foreign mouth”, abused another helper and, when a train manager tried to intervene, threatened to assault him and throw him out of a window. Prosecutor Charles Blatchford said of Steventon tirade: “A number of people said it was a scary and intimidating incident in a confined space.”
After British Transport Police intercepted the train at Penrith, Steventon was removed and asked to attend a voluntary interview. He did not, and when officers went to his Currock Street home on September 4, Steventon punched and kicked out at one and, after being arrested, assaulted four more in a custody suite.
Steventon admitted eight offences, including racially aggravated fear or provocation of violence, and five emergency worker assaults.
Judge Nicholas Barker heard Steventon was “completely remorseful”, a “loving” father and had a long-standing back problem for which he desperately required an operation, and which had caused a personality disorder and “mood swings”.
Jailing Steventon for a year, Judge Barker called his train crimes “a disgraceful and wholly uncalled-for and unnecessary course of conduct”.
