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Daily Mail, Wednesday July 27, 2005
By James Mills
A taxi driver who raced to a police station to turn in three yobs who were molesting a woman in the back of his cab has been fined for speeding. Gary Flintoft faces a £60 penalty and three points on his licence after being caught on camera doing 37mph in a 30mph zone.
To make matters worse, when he arrived at the station it was closed and the drunken attackers smashed their way out of his Hackney cab and escaped.
Mr Flintoft said last night: “I was just trying to help someone but the criminals got away and I'm the one facing prosecution. It's ridiculous.”
The trouble started two weeks ago when Mr Flintoft, 46, picked up the three men – who were aged between 25 and 30 – outside a nightclub in Hull at 1am. A 33 year old woman and her boyfriend, who did not know the men, agreed to share the cab as they were going in the same direction.
Mr Flintoft said: “The boyfriend sat in the front passenger seat and the woman sat in the back with the men. But they started hassling her and touching her. They were draping their arms around her and touching her legs so I turned round and told them to stop. The boyfriend was also angry, but the men just carried on and started threatening us. The woman was crying and was in a right state. They said if the boyfriend wanted to make something of it then I should stop the cab and they could get out and sort it out. It was then that I decided to drive to a police station as quickly as possible. I thought stopping the cab with no police around could make things worse. It could have got really nasty. The police station was a couple of miles away so I put my foot down and was flashed [by a speed camera] but I didn't really care at the time. My only thought was for the safety of the woman.
But when he pulled up outside the Hessle Road police station Mr Flintoft was horrified to see it had closed for the night at 11pm.
“I rang 999 and they said they'd send someone straight away. I kept the doors of the cab locked so the men couldn't get out. But they started pulling all the rubber from around the edge of the rear windscreen and managed to kick the whole back window out. They climbed out and ran off. About ten minutes later a male and female officer arrived in a patrol car.”
A few days later, Mr Flintoft received a fixed penalty notice for speeding through the post.
“I've been told that I will have to go to court and plead not guilty to speeding if I want the charge quashed,” he said. “That means I'll have to take a day off work and there's a chance the court could find me guilty.”
Humberside Police yesterday urged anyone with information about the attack on the woman to come forward.
A spokesman said Mr Flintoft could lodge a written appeal against his speeding fine. “Speed cameras cannot distinguish between who is speeding legitimately and who is not and a ticket is issued automatically,” he said. “But any driver has the right to appeal. They can either go to court and plead not guilty or in some circumstances the ticket can simply be cancelled.”
It is not the first time members of the public have found police stations closed when they need help, however. Last week, a mother told how she marched her two sons to a station in Manchester after finding out they had been involved in a series of robberies.
Millie Ferryman went to three police stations which were all closed before she found one that was open, and then had to speak to an officer. Her drug addict sons, Nicholas, 35, and Jason, 33, confessed to the crimes and were jailed last week for three and a half years each.
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