AN OXFORD student is said to have pawed a fellow student after taking LSD during freshers’ week two years’ ago.

Alexander Cartwright’s ‘bizarre’ behaviour began after he took acid in another student’s room in Keble College on October 10, 2020, jurors at Oxford Crown Court were told yesterday.  

Prosecutor Stefan Weidmann said the episode with him removing his trousers in the room and ended when he groped a female student’s breast five hours later.

Cartwright, 20, was then said to have racially abused a black college porter who came to the student’s aid, calling him ‘Morgan Freeman’ and ‘Nelson Mandela’ before asking him the ‘deeply offensive question “why do all black men look the same?”’.

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The defendant, of Onslow Road, Richmond, denies sexual assault, threatening language and damaging a fire extinguisher.  

Opening the case for the prosecution yesterday, Mr Weidmann said: “The facts of this trial are not in massive dispute. The question, as I understand it on behaviour of the Crown, is the million dollar question: what was his state of mind?”

The jury was told that Cartwright had been in another student’s room at Keble College at around 1.30am on October 10 with three others. They were taking LSD, it was said.

“It appears the one affected most was Alexander Cartwright, who shortly after consumption of the drugs began to behave in a rather bizarre way,” Mr Weidmann said.

“He pulled his trousers down and got his penis out. He was told ‘put it away, pull your trousers back up’.”

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Cartwright was said to have wanted to go into the corridor of the accommodation block and ‘talk about love’. They returned to the female student in whose room the drugs had been consumed but, at 5.30am, she asked him to leave, the jury was told. She accompanied him to his room but he allegedly followed her back to her bedroom. The woman was said to have been so upset that she began crying.

Another female student allegedly heard Cartwright at around 6am banging on her door. He was said to have called out: “You know you want it. Give me some of that love.” Mr Weidmann said the woman made it clear in forthright language that he needed to go. But his response was to make a lewd request and followed it up with a racist request about the woman’s ‘brown rice cakes’, apparently meaning her breasts.

Around an hour later, another woman was said to have let Cartwright through a locked door to the corridor after hearing a ‘colossal racket’. He allegedly told her ‘I know you want me’, placed his hand on her breast then said ‘let’s just do it’.  He was said to have grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards her bed.

A college porter who arrived after receiving a call from one student, was said to have been subjected to racial verbal abuse.

Interviewed by the police, Cartwright admitted taking acid and said it was ‘all a bit of a blank’.

Mr Weidmann said: “Some might say [freshers’ week] is supposed to be pretty wild. What it is supposed to be is a whole lot of fun. It wasn’t fun for the people who had to deal with Mr Cartwright that night back in October 2020.

“On that day – it was a Saturday, coming towards the end of freshers’ week – if the court forgives the vernacular, this defendant Alexander Cartwright got totally and utterly off his head.

“He drank a lot – I have already said freshers’ week can be a time of [excessive] alcohol consumption.

“We’re not the fun police. It happens – people occasionally drink a lot.

“He then took the decision, which he doubtless regrets to take the illegal and powerful drug known as LSD, acid in street language.”

The trial continues.

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