Newcastle trespasser risked life by clambering onto South Tyneside Metro tracks to retrieve dropped sick note

Sean McCabe, 43, jumped down from the platform at Fellgate, Jarrow – then decided it was too difficult to pull himself back up. McCabe, of Jane Street, Pelaw Main, near Walker, Newcastle, instead reached safety by walking along the tracks to a ramped exit on Sunday, September 14.

But he was spotted on CCTV and arrested by British Transport Police officers who he told he was a qualified railway engineer. At South Tyneside Magistrates’ Court, he pleaded guilty to a charge of trespass on a railway – his 51st criminal conviction and 100th offence.

Prosecutor Rehana Haque said: “Officers responded to reports of a man on the tracks and saw someone of his description who appeared heavily intoxicated. They found that he had been on the tracks, and he said that he was a railway engineer.

“CCTV showed him getting down onto the tracks and picking up what seemed to be a bottle. He said that he had got down onto the tracks and accepted that he had put himself in danger.”

The offence put McCabe in breach of two six-month conditional discharges, both committed earlier this year for being drunk and disorderly. Mark Humble, defending, said: “He was on the Metro, and he got off at the station and the train pulled away.

“He seems to have got down onto the tracks and there were reports he was looking around the ground for something. It was his sick note and it could blow away quite quickly. He then picks it up.

“He needed to be on the other side of the tracks. I think he thought that it would be quite difficult to pull himself back up. He walked to a ramp. Fortunately, there was no other train coming.”

Magistrates fined McCabe £60 for the trespass offence, with £85 court costs and a £24 victim surcharge. They fined him a total of £100 for the two breaches of the conditional discharge orders.