A teenager who was allegedly sexually assaulted at a bus stop by a Somalian runner who trained with Mo Farah phoned her mother hysterically crying afterwards, a court has heard.
The young woman told her mother through tears, ‘Don’t shout at me,’ before revealing she had just been attacked, jurors were told.
Abdinasir Elmi, 26, from Somalia, is accused of dragging the teenager to a park in Bournemouth, Dorset, where he allegedly touched her on the evening of April 22 last year.
He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual assault at Winchester Crown Court, Hants, where he is on trial through a translator.
He allegedly approached the young woman when she was alone on the street at around 10.30pm.
She had been out with friends, who had gone home, and was en route to another friend’s house, where she had organised to stay.
Elmi is said to have walked up to her, offered to get her safely to the bus, put her in a headlock, forced her into Bournemouth Gardens, and assaulted her.
Today, the court was told Elmi was staying in the Roundhouse Hotel in Bournemouth at the time, which is known to house asylum seekers.
Abdinasir Elmi, 26, is accused of sexually assaulting the lone 18-year-old girl in Bournemouth last year
Elmi allegedly appraoched the teen was she was alone, before putting her in a headlock and dragging her to a park
It is not known when he entered the UK, but he has been training with Bournemouth Athletics Club since October 2024.
He previously trained with British gold-medal Olympian back in Somalia, according to a report from the Bournemouth Athletic Club from October.
Prosecuting, Oliver Hirsch claimed Elmi digitally penetrated the girl and touched her without her consent.
It is alleged he had been ‘watching’ her and her friends, and then approached the teen when the others left to go home.
In a written statement read out in court, the 18-year-old’s mother said she had fallen asleep while waiting for a text from her daughter to say she was safely back at her friend’s house.
She said: ‘I briefly went to sleep, and I then woke up to my phone ringing. [My daughter] was on the phone. She sounded hysterical, and I could hear her crying.
‘She kept saying, “Don’t have a go at me, don’t shout at me.”‘
Her mother said she had warned her daughter about going out in Bournemouth town centre, and about the danger she could be attacked or raped.
She apparently responded that she would be fine, because she was 18 and an adult.
The mother said: ‘I recall [my daughter] went out to see her friend and her boyfriend.
‘That night I was at my home address in bed and I was on my phone waiting for [my daughter] to contact me.
‘She told me that she intended on staying at her friend’s house. I briefly went to sleep.
‘She told me that [her friend’s] mum turned up in a two-seater car, and she said that she would get the bus.
‘She said she was approached by the male and he said he would make sure she would get to the bus stop safely.
‘She described that he put his arm around her. She described that he had tightened his grip on her.
‘She told me that he got her in a headlock and walked her to the gardens.’
The mother said that, after the alleged assault, her daughter had managed to run off to find her boyfriend and his friends.
Her mother called the police that evening, and she went to pick her up from her boyfriend’s house.
Police Constable Kate Ementon said she had attended that night to talk to the 18-year-old girl.
She said: ‘[The girl] struggled to speak about the incident and found it very upsetting.’
The girl told police she did not know the man, and could not identify him.
Her mother said that she had been impacted by the incident more than she realised.
She said: ‘She is now more closed off.
‘She no longer goes out as much as she used to, and she didn’t go out in Bournemouth for a few months afterwards.’
Elmi gave a no comment interview to the police when he was first arrested in September last year.
Mr Hirsch said Elmi has now claimed this incident was consensual.
The trial continues.