A TWISTED taxi driver locked female passengers in his car during late-night cab journey.

 

Michael Boyd, 33, is facing jail for a series of creepy cab rides in Glasgow where he locked several women in his vehicle and asked them why he didn't have a girlfriend.

The Hampden Cabs driver also ogled female passengers and sat outside their houses for as long as half an hour after dropping them off.

Boyd admitted placing four women in a state of fear and alarm and lying to council bosses to get a taxi license when he appeared in court earlier this year.

He will have to wait to learn his fate - because a sheriff was only given a crucial psychiatric assessment "seconds" before he was due to sentence him.

He locked one terrified woman in the back of his private hire vehicle and told her he wanted to have sex with her.

He made the chilling comments to the woman while driving down a back road after pretending he was an old friend.

Paisley Sheriff Court heard that Boyd had been working as a taxi driver in his home town of Kilmarnock in 2013.

Several women made complaints about his behaviour while they were in his cab so he surrendered his license.

He then applied to East Renfrewshire council for a license to drive taxis in and around the Glasgow area.

He lied to get the new license, saying he had never held a taxi drivers' license before on his application form.

East Renfrewshire Council granted him a taxi driver's license on April 7 last year and he began driving for Hampden Cabs.

The incidents, which took place in Glasgow's Dennistoun area, the town of Barrhead and village of Neilston, East Renfrewshire, began taking place just a few weeks later.

When Boyd admitted his guilt Sheriff David Pender called for him to be assessed by social workers and a group that works with sex offenders in Renfrewshire.

He returned to the dock last month and sentence was deferred again after a social worker who interviewed Boyd suggested he be examined by a forensic psychiatrist.

He was back in court yesterday, expecting to finally receive his punishment his summer 2014 offences.

But Sheriff David Pender was unable to pass sentence because he received the crucial psychiatric assessment just seconds before the case began.

A court worker brought three copies of the assessment into the courtroom just before the case started.

He deferred sentence on Boyd until next week.