Matildas captain Sam Kerr has told a London court she was “terrified for her life” when a taxi driver refused to stop and let her and partner Kristie Mewis out.

The soccer star took the stand for the first time on Thursday (AEDT) in her trial for alleged racial abuse of a UK police officer.

Kerr said she feared she and Mewis were being kidnapped by the London cab driver.

“Everything was going through my mind about being in a car with a stranger I deemed to be dangerous,” she told the court.

“There was no reasoning with him. It was his way or nothing.

“Kristie asked him to stop the car but there was no change to his driving. We had no idea where we were.

“Kristie was very distressed. She was crying and scared. I’ve never seen her like that before and it made me more scared.

“I started to realise how serious the situation was. It put me in protective mode … he had the power over us.

“I deemed him to be dangerous because of the driving, but also because he could have taken us anywhere.”

Kerr said that after a night out in central London she and Mewis tried to call an Uber, which they preferred as the app has a ride-sharing function so friends can track a journey.

Unable to do, so they took a cab, which Kerr said she normally shuns on safety reasons. She noted she had grown up in Perth amid speculation “Claremont killer” Bradley Edwards — who was convicted in 2020 for two murders in 1996 and 1997 — was a cabbie.

The 40-minute trip home was fine until Kerr, feeling nauseous, put her head out of the window and began vomiting.

At this point, she said, the cabbie began shouting and driving “dangerously and erratically”, speeding up and swerving round corners.

Neither woman was wearing a seatbelt, so they found themselves being thrown around the cab.

Kerr said she feared for her life, both scared of crashing and of a male stranger “having power over us”. Mewis became distressed and Kerr said she felt protective.

“That is the role I play in the relationship, I am the more masculine one. I am just seen as, for the lack of a better phrase, the man-type role,” she said.

When the taxi stopped by a police station and officers arrived she “felt relieved”. But she was again scared as she “felt something dodgy was going on”.

“I felt they were trying to get me for criminal damage”, after Mewis had broken a cab window trying to escape.

That ultimately led to her abuse of Constable Stephen Lovell.

“It is hard to watch. I am embarrassed watching that back, the way I was acting, but also watching myself in that much distress,” she told the court of watching a video recording of her exchange with Lovell.

Kerr denied she was “drunk and kicking off” in the back of the taxi before the ill-fated exchange with police.

On a draining day in the witness box, the Matildas captain relived the racism her family suffered in Australia, spoke of her similar experiences in England.

On a lighter note, the trial doubled as an unusual gender reveal as Kerr said her American fiancée Mewis was carrying a baby boy, due in May.

Kerr took the stand on day three of the trial and faced a demanding last half-hour of cross-examination from top London KC Bill Emlyn Jones.

Jones elicited from Kerr an agreement that “you were so drunk you were sick” but denied that she was “kicking off in the back because you were drunk, had misunderstood what was going on and your behaviour became excitable”.

Kerr said her memory of the night was “decently good” although she could remember nothing of the driver. He was described by Jones as having a “strong south Asian accent” (which in the UK is likely to mean from the Indian sub-continent).

This was relevant, as earlier Kerr had told her own counsel, Grace Forbes, she “believed [the police] were treating me differently based on what they perceived was the colour of my skin, particularly PC Lovell”.

Lovell is the officer Kerr twice called “f—ing stupid and white” early on January 30, 2023, leading to being charged with racially aggravated harassment with intent to cause alarm or distress.

Kerr said Lovell’s attitude “was triggering”.

“I felt I had experienced this, people trying to put things on me because of how I look, who I am,” she said.

Kerr, mostly composed in demeanour and wearing a white long-sleeved top with her hair tied back, described how she had “witnessed my brother (former West Coast Eagles star Daniel) and father (Roger, who is Anglo-Indian, and was in court) experience racism because of the colour of their skin”.

Racism, she added, had “always been a touchy subject growing up, been prominent in Australia with the Indigenous population. I was about nine or ten when I first witnessed it. I was quite confused, then sad”.

At school she was labelled “a trouble-maker when clearly I was not”. Even now, “at a shopping centre, if not dressed correctly, I get followed by security guards or staff”.

-with AAP