An Uber driver groomed a tipsy 14-year-old schoolgirl after picking her up and telling her she ‘looked hot and had nice lips’, a court heard today.
Spyros Ntounis, 35, from West Ealing, admitted slowing his cab down to 5mph as the journey finished so he could ‘spend more time with her’.
The taxi driver is accused of attempting to groom the teenager in April last year after she used the online minicab firm to book a journey home from a night out at a friend’s home.
She told Kingston Crown Court: ‘He was saying I was hot and I had nice lips.
‘I thought he was being nice, but then I thought it was a bit odd.
‘As he got close to my house he started driving slowly because he said he wanted to spend more time with me, which I thought was odd.’
Allister Walker, prosecuting, said: ‘At the time of the offence the defendant was a mini-cab driver working for Uber who collected the complainant from her friend’s address at 9.30pm.
‘During the short journey he made inappropriate comments and obtained her phone number and over the next few days he sent her messages, asking her to meet him.
‘The prosecution say this was for some kind of sexual activity.’
He added: ‘She had drunk some rum and coke with her friends and says on a scale of drunkenness she was “five or six” out of ten.’
The teenager’s 15-year-old boyfriend had seen her off on the taxi ride from Barnes to Kingston-upon-Thames.
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