Mortgage boss assaulted rail worker af ter missing train to his birthday party
A DRUNKEN mortgage broker grabbed a railway worker and shouted homophobic abuse when he missed a train to get to his birthday party, a court was told. Simon Checkley demanded to be let through a ticket barrier at King’s Cross station after turning up too late for the train back to his £1.5million home in Hertfordshire.
Furious, the father-of-four, 55, shouted, ‘Your system is b ***** ks’, prompting station worker Luke Leach to tell him off for being ‘hostile and rude’.
Checkley, 55, replied: ‘Your service is c**p. What’s your name? I’m going to take a picture.’
CCTV footage was played to magistrates showing Checkley taking out his mobile phone and telling Mr Leach to ‘smile for the picture’.
He then asked to see Mr Leach’s name tag before grabbing the top of the train worker’s left arm, saying: ‘Come here.’
Mr Leach said: ‘Don’t touch me. That’s assault.’
Checkley replied: ‘I bet you really want a f***ing fight you little gay boy.’
The broker also shouted repeatedly: ‘Any time, any place. We’ll see what happens.’
The police were called after Checkley grabbed Mr Leach, who said the incident left him feeling ‘really angry’.
Checkley, who runs his own mortgage brokerage, pleaded guilty at City of London Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday to assaulting Mr Leach on May 3.
The court heard that on the day of the incident Checkley had been drinking wine to celebrate his 55th birthday and the 20th anniversary of the creation of his mortgage business at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in central London. Prosecutor Jennifer Gatland said Mr Leach saw Checkley trying to get through the barrier to catch a train, and heard him shouting out: ‘Oi, staff, let me out.’
She added: ‘The defendant was told there was no need to be rude, and when he repeated that he wanted to be let out he was informed that his behaviour was hostile and rude.’
Checkley admitted to police he had been drinking when he was detained at the station, but claimed that he had only touched Mr Leach’s arm and denied making any homophobic comments.
Aisling Byrnes, representing Checkley, said he was ‘mortified and deeply sorry’ about the incident, and could not remember using any abusive language.
She added: ‘He accepts he was frustrated and wanted to get to the train and admits he might have been abrupt and was reprimanded by Mr Leach.
‘Mr Checkley was being told off and he escalated things.’
Miss Byrnes said the incident was ‘heated on both sides’, but Checkley did not want to ‘waste the court’s time by mitigating the difference’.
She added: ‘He has worked hard all his life and is used to good behaviour and good manners.
‘He is not someone who is regularly inebriated. He is a law-abiding man who lost his temper.’
She added that he was ‘ashamed to miss the birthday party because he was in police custody’.
Magistrate Colin Bateman-Jones ordered Checkley, of Datchworth, to pay a £500 fine, £350 in costs and court fees, and £100 compensation to the victim.
‘Not regularly inebriated’