‘Do you want beef with the devil?’ Train attacker told victim before stabbing him, court hears

He further denies 13 additional counts of attempted murder relating to three people in Peterborough on October 31, and an attack on 10 people on a London-bound LNER train on the evening of November 1.

Giving evidence at Cambridge Crown Court, one witness said: “I saw him [Williams] grab his waistband and pull out a knife and stab him [Idris]. Everyone on the train started screaming and everyone was huddled in the corner. It looked like he was targeting him. He said, ‘are you trying to beef with the devil?’.”

Jurors heard how Williams “slashed” the boy around the face, and that Idris sustained a “deep cut to his lips and hands”.

The witness added: “There was blood everywhere. I think it was a machete.

“In the moment the knife came out it was so sudden. My body reacted before my mind could.

“He could’ve stabbed everyone there, he was so close to everyone.”

Witness Macarena Lopez, who was travelling home on the railway line with her partner after a Halloween dinner, told police a man on the train had started “brandishing a knife”.

In a recorded interview played to jurors at Cambridge Crown Court, she said the man appeared to be “specifically targeting a boy who seemed to me like a teenager, maybe 18 or so, maybe a bit younger, who was with a girl next to him”.

She said the man “fixated on the boy and started saying: ‘You are the devil.'”

She added: “The attacker for some reason thought this boy was the devil and wanted to harm him.It felt like he had a sense of doing justice.”

Ms Lopez said she thought the man may be having a “psychotic episode” and “was seeing things that were not clear to the rest of us”.

Describing how she felt during the attack, Ms Lopez added: “I remember hyperventilating a lot and really hoping he didn’t do any more harm as it was so unpredictable, it was so senseless, there was no story to it.

“It felt like being in a capsule, I couldn’t get away.”

The trial heard from both witnesses on the DLR train who said one man stood in the middle of Williams and the people crowding into the corner of the carriage.

Witness Macarena Lopez said: “A middle-aged man next to the boy started confronting the attacker”.

When the train got into Pontoon Dock station the doors opened and the court heard Williams then left the station.

Ms Lopez told Police: “It’s almost like by magic his brain just switched off, that psychotic mind just calmed down as he just left the station as soon as he could.”

Judge Mr Justice Calver told jurors at Cambridge Crown Court earlier in the trial that whether Williams carried out the attacks is not in question, but they must consider whether he intended to kill those individuals when he carried out the attacks.

The trial continues.