A man covered in blood burst into a train driver’s cab, threatened him and attempted to hijack the train, a week after the Huntingdon train stabbings, Sky News has learned.
The suspect allegedly grabbed the terrified driver’s mobile phone, stopped him from escaping and told him people were trying to kill him.
After trying unsuccessfully to calm down his attacker, the driver managed to jump from the empty train and raise the alarm.
The man reportedly stayed on board playing with controls and sounding the horn in an apparent bid to start the engine.
The attempted hijack happened in West London while the train was being driven from London’s Paddington station to a depot at Reading.
The Great Western Railway service was stopped at a red signal after reports of a trespasser on the track, when the driver spotted the man on a camera as he headed through the carriages to the cab.
A spokesman for British Transport Police said: “Officers were called to the line near to Southall railway station, just before midnight on Saturday 8 November, following reports of a trespasser on the tracks acting erratically and threatening a member of railway staff.
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“Officers attended and a man was detained under the Mental Health Act and remains in hospital.”
The incident happened a week after an unrelated knife attack on an LNER service from Doncaster to London King’s Cross on 1 November.
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Anthony Williams, 32, of no fixed abode, has been charged with several offences including 11 counts of attempted murder.
It follows a mass stabbing on a train which stopped at Huntingdon railway station, and another attack hours earlier at a London station.
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