One of these situations where I could equally see the driver being in big trouble over it; or, on the other hand, never hearing another peep about it...
It certainly doesn't look good on the video, whatever the justification is.
Video not that good in terms of evidence, though - it's from a bit of a distance, and it's been blurred when it's effectively all over and the filming gets a bit closer.
And it's a Reach plc web video, so it's all adverts and difficult to rewind unless you want even more adverts, then if you let it get to the end it goes onto a completely different video, blah, blah. Tried to find the original source of the video elsewhere, but no luck
Taxi driver filmed trying to 'run over' teens says 'I would do it again'https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornw ... un-9909800The teens had to leap out the way as the taxi driver accelerated towards themA taxi driver in Cornwall has been filmed driving erratically towards a group of teenagers before getting out to shout at them. In the video, Stephen Rowe, from KC Taxis in Truro, can be seen driving towards the group of teenagers in the road while beeping his horn as they jump out of the way.
Mr Rowe seemingly then proceeds to get out of his vehicle and begins shouting and swearing at them to “f*** off” and move on. Mr Rowe claimed he was trying to disperse the young people who he said had been “intimidating” two homeless men on Boscawen Street.
After the video emerged, Mr Rowe agreed to speak out about the incident, which happened on the evening of January 19, claiming that he was simply trying to stop the youths from continuing to “threaten” the two vulnerable men. While he admitted that it may have looked “from an onlooker's perspective” that he drove at the group of teens, he said he was not driving directly at them but to a safe place to stop close by.
It was about 5:40pm that evening when Mr Rowe said he had picked up a customer from the Tesco Express on Boscawen Street and headed towards St Nicholas Street where he claimed he saw what looked like 10 to 15 youths surrounding and intimidating two homeless men.
Mr Rowe said the teenagers were standing in the road and on the pavement whilst shouting at the two men and “making threats towards them”. He told CornwallLive: “It was a quick reaction after I saw the kids pushing the homeless men around and getting in their faces, and obviously, it made me think of the poor guy who got beaten up in the multi-storey car park a couple of years ago and almost died.
“In the video, you can see that [the teens] are on the pavement and in the road, so I drove up towards them beeping my horn which was trying to disperse them from the situation. I pulled up to the kerb, pulled my handbrake up and I jumped out and started shouting at them.”
Mr Rowe said he repeatedly told them to “back off” and leave the homeless men alone who he said were quite obviously scared. “The reason I was shouting was because it’s the same tactic the police use to deter people,” he said.
“I’m ex-army, so I learnt in the past that in certain situations, you need to do that because [the youths] were shouting at this one guy in particular and threatening him and if I had to walk up to them and say ‘excuse me gentlemen, please leave him alone’, they wouldn’t which is why I did what I did.
“At no point did I lay a finger on any of them or hit them, it was all them threatening me and the homeless men. I said I have it all on dashcam, which I don’t because I don’t have one but I thought by saying it, it would get them to stop.”
In the video, one of the teenagers can be heard saying to Mr Rowe: “You just tried to run us over mate”, to which Mr Rowe replied “I would f***ing do it again”. When asked to comment on why he said this, Mr Rowe said: “I would do it again. I would do it over and over again if it stopped teenagers beating someone up.
“I would do it again because I would hope that if it was my granddad being beaten up or intimidated by kids or if it was me and I was unfortunate enough to be on the street and some teenagers were threatening me and my life, I would hope a driver or a taxi driver would do the same thing rather than driving past and doing nothing because they don’t want to get involved.
“I would not drive at them again in that way, in any situation where I see someone getting beaten up, yes I would. I would not have hit anyone or drove into them, hence why I was beeping my horn to disperse them.”
Despite the kids seemingly having to jump out of the way of Mr Rowe’s vehicle, he said that he was not actually that close to them. “Why would I randomly drive at kids? You can see in the video that they were looking at someone in the buildings,” he said.
Mr Rowe said after he left the scene to take his customer to their destination, he called the police to report the incident and later returned to speak to an officer to explain the situation.
When contacted by CornwallLive about the incident, a spokesperson for Devon and Cornwall Police said: “Police were notified at around 6pm on Sunday, January 19, to reports of a disturbance involving dozens of youths on Boscawen Street in Truro. No injuries were reported. Enquiries are currently ongoing into the incident.”
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