A Metropolitan police firearms officer may have been “angry, frustrated and annoyed” when he fatally shot a suspect who posed no immediate threat, a jury at the Old Bailey has been told.
Chris Kaba, 24, was killed on 5 September 2022 in Streatham, south London, when a single bullet was fired into his head by a police marksman, Martyn Blake, 40, who denies the charge of murder.
Kaba was being followed by police while driving an Audi that was suspected to have been involved in a firearms incident the night before. The car was stopped and surrounded by armed officers, who alleged that the vehicle made an attempt to escape.
The prosecution presented footage and reconstructions of the incident, showing that at least six armed officers had exited their vehicles and were in close proximity to the Audi, which was stationary at the time of the shooting. Prosecutor Tom Little KC told the jury that Kaba’s car was “penned in” by police vehicles, with both of the driver’s hands on the steering wheel.
No Imminent Threat
Little argued that at the moment Blake opened fire, there was no imminent danger to the officers surrounding the car. The prosecution asked the jury to consider whether Kaba’s attempt to escape—driving forward and backward—had caused Blake to become “angry, frustrated, and annoyed.
Little said: “Chris Kaba had made a previous attempt to escape by driving forwards, had failed, and now he had far less space to accelerate forwards. We say that, on careful analysis of all of the evidence, nothing Chris Kaba did in the seconds before he was shot justified this defendant’s decision to shoot.
“He shot him once straight to the head. He was trained to use a firearm and, if necessary, to shoot, knowing that almost inevitably death would follow. The defendant did so when Chris Kaba was sitting in the driver’s seat of an Audi motor vehicle with both of his hands on the steering wheel.”
Vehicle Pinned, No Danger to Life
Little told the jury that it was “far from obvious” that Kaba had any space to escape, and his vehicle had become penned in. He stressed that “there was no real or immediate threat to the life of anybody present at the scene at the all-important point in time when the defendant fired that fatal shot.
The prosecutor also noted that while Kaba initially attempted to drive forward, causing “an element of initial danger,” the speed of the vehicle was not significant, and no officers were injured. After this attempt, Kaba drove backward a short distance before his vehicle became stationary. It was at this point that Blake fired the fatal shot.
“Just after the Audi became stationary, the defendant decided to shoot Chris Kaba. He should not, we say on all the evidence, have done so,” Little argued.
Family Present in Court
Members of Kaba’s family, including his parents, were present in court, sitting just metres from Blake as Little laid out the prosecution’s case to the jury of nine men and three women.
https:///www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE_DWfUs7cY
The jury was informed that the night before Kaba was shot, a suspected firearms incident in Brixton had been reported, and the Audi he was driving was linked to that incident. Details of the vehicle, including its registration, were included in a daily briefing circulated by the specialist firearms command on 5 September.
Officers spotted the Audi at 9:51 pm on Camberwell Church Street and decided to follow it, later making a decision to stop the vehicle using armed officers. The confrontation ultimately ended on Kirkstall Gardens, where Blake fired the fatal shot that killed Kaba.
Little told the jury: “The cause of his death was a single gunshot wound to the head with associated catastrophic traumatic brain injury.”
The trial continues.
