A Metropolitan police officer accused of sexually assaulting a woman while on duty has told a court his DNA may have ended up on her breast after she shook his sweaty hand.
PC Fabian Aguilar-Delgado has been accused of putting a hand down the woman’s top and sucking on her breast after offering to search her house for her abusive ex-partner.
DNA belonging to the officer, who had only been out of training for about a month at the time of the alleged incident in May 2020, was later found on swabs on the woman’s right nipple and breast, Southwark crown court heard.
Aguilar-Delgado, who worked as cabin crew for Ryanair and Norwegian before joining the Met in 2019, denies a single count of sexual assault on 24 May 2020.
The officer, 40, said in evidence on Friday that he was “disgusted” by the allegations, which are claimed to have taken place while he was in full uniform and while his colleague was in a car outside.
Aguilar-Delgado, from Crawley, West Sussex, told jurors he was “shocked” and thought it was “impossible” when he was first told about the DNA discovery.
Asked how he thought his DNA got on to the woman’s breast, he said he had been close to her “talking loudly” and “maybe spitting or coughing”, as well as “touching handles” in her house in Croydon, south London.
He also suggested the transfer may have been as a result of her shaking his hand, telling the court: “The way she grabbed and shook my hand to say thank you, it wasn’t like a normal handshake,” he said.
“She just put the full arm in and grabbed it,” he said, adding that his hands were “sweaty” because it was a hot day and he had been biting his fingernails.
A video of a reconstruction of the alleged handshake was played in court and Aguilar-Delgado showed his chewed down nails to the jury. He had not been wearing a body-worn camera because there were “not enough” for everyone, he told the court.
“I remember that she went back and I don’t know if she touched herself to pull her top up,” said Aguilar-Delgado.
He said the woman was “confused and agitated” when he arrived on the scene with a colleague and he found her difficult to understand because she was “erratic and nervous” and “under the influence of alcohol”.
The trial continues.
