Taxi Driver Online

A cyclist who claims he was strangled unconscious by a taxi driver after a road crash in Oxford Street is seeking witnesses in a bid to clear his name.

Jared Kelly, 39, a screenwriter, says he has been caught in a nightmare after regaining consciousness only to be handcuffed by police and charged with assaulting the cabbie.

Mr Kelly, who lives off Westbourne Grove, claims the driver strangled him with his own scarf after he went to remonstrate about being knocked off his bike.

Now he has launched a search for witnesses to help defend himself after he was charged with common assault and ordered to attend Horseferry Road magistrates' court today.

The incident was recorded on Westminster council's CCTV cameras but was subsequently deleted, while the police say they have no details of one man who came to Mr Kelly's aid and who offered to be a witness.

Mr Kelly, who used to work for Channel 4, was cycling west along Oxford Street on Tuesday March 9 between four and five o'clock in the afternoon when he was overtaken by a taxi near Dean Street.

The cab then pulled in to pickup a passenger, causing Mr Kelly to crash into the rear of the vehicle.

He told the Standard: “I was just tootling along — I'm not an idiot who goes fast — when I was aware of a taxi overtaking me. He just cut straight across me and stopped. I went straight into the back of him and fell on the floor.

“I walked the bike round the front of the taxi and said, what is going on?' He just told me to f**k off. I said, you could have killed me'. He said, I'm a taxi, that is what we do'. There was an exchange and I said to him: You are a disgrace to your profession.' Then he said, f**k off, you [edited by admin]'.

“That completely threw me. I'm of Irish, Scottish and English descent but I don't look Asian. It kind of popped my anger bubble. I said, you are a disgrace to your country' and he exploded. He grabbed the scarf around my neck. It noosed immediately. I was unconscious in seconds.”

Mr Kelly said he came round on the ground believing he had been involved in a road accident.

He said a police officer began to question him in a hostile manner after being told by the cab driver that he had been the attacker.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/ ... i-crash.do

But then surely a record of the driver's details should have been made by the policeman.

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IDFIMH

Or was he cycling without due care and attention

Why was the council CCTV wiped ? or was it that the cameras don't work just like the cctv in almost every town other town in Britain and nobody pressed the record button in the first place