Billy Elliot dancer sues after police ‘stamp on leg’
Ballet star wants £50k for injury
A BALLET dancer who played Billy Elliot in the West End is suing police for up to £50,000 after an officer ‘stamped on his leg’, a court heard yesterday.
Alex Loxton, 32, claims his career was halted when the aggressive policeman injured his ankle during a stop-and-search.
Mr Loxton, who performed for the Queen on her 80th birthday, is seeking damages for his ankle as well as for ‘embarrassment, inconvenience and injury to feelings’.
Scotland Yard denies assault and insists the search was justified. It also questions the injuries.
Mr Loxton trained at the Royal Ballet School and starred alongside Keira Knightley and Helen Mirren in Disney’s Nutcracker.
As well as a host of TV roles, he played an older Billy Elliot at London’s Victoria Palace Theatre.
The stop-and-search happened when he went to Kennington police station in south London to retrieve a stolen motorbike helmet in 2016, court filings reveal.
While there, he decided ‘on the off- chance’ to see if his stolen motor scooter was being kept in a gated area behind the building, his solicitor Ian Gould said. As he was leaving, a car with three officers reversed towards him and he was asked for ID due to his ‘strange and suspicious’ behaviour.
Mr Loxton claims he told them he did not have any ID on him and asked why they wanted to see it – but was threatened with arrest. An officer then got out of the car and confronted the dancer, ‘grabbing his left arm with both hands and trying to force it behind his back’, Central London County Court heard.
Mr Gould said Mr Loxton ‘instinctively recoiled’ before the officer stamped on his ankle while trying to wrestle him to the ground. Mr Gould said another officer then tried to force his right arm behind his back before he was slammed against a wall and cuffed.
Mr Loxton, from Brixton, also claims he was left with soft tissue injuries to his hand after ‘knee and forearm strikes’. His lawyers say the ankle injury meant he ‘was prevented from pursuing his career’ and now needs surgery.
‘Throughout his time whilst detained, he felt distress, anxiety, embarrassment, humiliation and degradation,’ Mr Gould said, adding that the incident happened in view of members of the public.
But defence lawyers said the officers restrained him only after he started shouting and acting aggressively. They ‘reasonably suspected’ he could be a criminal and tried to search him, but he began walking away. This led to police using ‘reasonable force’ to detain him, said Metropolitan Police barrister Russell Fortt.
Scotland Yard also denies that Mr Loxton was stamped on, or suffered ‘knee or elbow strikes’.
‘All such force as was used against Mr Loxton was in order to effect his lawful detention and search and to prevent him harming the officers, who reasonably feared he may do so due to his violent and aggressive demeanour,’ Mr Fortt told the brief hearing.
The date for a full trial has not yet been set.
‘Slammed against a wall and cuffed’