You’re rotten!
City worker fined £1,500 for tirade at commuter who ate ‘disgusting’ breakfast of boiled eggs on the train
GOING to work on an egg has long been hailed as a cracking way to start the day.
But one irritable City worker has been fined £1,500 after launching an ‘aggressive’ tirade at a fellow commuter – for tucking in to her boiled egg breakfast on a 6am train to London.
Samantha Mead, 50, was said to have flown into a rage at Erika Stoter over the ‘smelly’ snack as the pair travelled from Chelmsford to Liverpool Street.
Miss Stoter told Blackfriars Crown Court that Mead had become agitated and made a ‘bad face’ when she started eating her breakfast – which she admitted had given off a strong smell.
The jury heard that the victim felt ‘intimidated and vulnerable’ during the incident in September 2018.
In her evidence, she told the court on Friday that Mead gave her ‘bad’ looks and moved towards the door to escape the pong, the Evening Standard reported.
She said that when she tried to gesture that she was sorry, Mead ‘quickly and aggressively’ moved towards her and called her ‘disgusting’.
Miss Stoter, who is originally from South America, said: ‘The woman asked me if I spoke English and I said no because I was scared and confused.
‘I thought she would stop ... she said, “You are disgusting”.’ She claimed that Mead leaned into her face and threatened her, saying: ‘You don’t know who I am, be careful. Do you want to go outside?’
Miss Stoter told the court that she asked the defendant: ‘Don’t you think you are quite old to be doing these kind of things?’ The victim said a fellow commuter on the busy train had complained about her food previously and she had closed her Tupperware box to stop the odour.
Asked why she was eating her hard-boiled eggs eggs in public so early in the morning, she told the jury: ‘I have to eat at that time because of my diet.’
She reported the incident to police after getting off the train at Liverpool Street but the defendant had already left the station.
Mead was later picked up by police and questioned four days later after Miss Stoter called them when she spotted her on the train again. Mead told the court she had been taking tablets for a medical condition and the smell of the eggs made her nauseous.
She insisted she had called the food – and not Miss Stoter – ‘disgusting’ and claimed her explanation about her health had fallen on deaf ears.
She denied losing her temper, but said she was ‘having my own private hell’. Mead, from Manningtree in Essex, was found guilty of one charge of intentionally causing harassment, alarm or distress and was fined £750 and ordered to pay £750 in compensation.
However, she was cleared of a racially aggravated public order offence.