A Metropolitan Police marksman on trial for murdering Chris Kaba pulled the trigger because he feared ‘one or many’ officers could be killed while the suspect tried to escape at ‘any cost’, jurors have heard.
Martyn Blake, 40, shot the 24-year-old in the head through the windscreen of an Audi during a ‘hard stop’ in Streatham, south London, on September 5, 2022.
Moments earlier, Mr Kaba had tried to get away by driving forward and then reversing into a police car which had blocked him in, the Old Bailey has heard.
The court was also told police had been looking for the Audi after its registration was linked to reports of gunshots in Brixton, south London the night before.
Defending, Patrick Gibbs KC told the jury that the case will focus on the moment that Blake ‘squeezed the trigger’.
He said: ‘The first issue for you is likely to be what did Martyn Blake honestly believe in the moment about the risk to his colleagues, over and above himself…as they tried to extract the driver from the Audi.
‘Whether it’s right or not, what did he genuinely believe were the risks.’
Mr Gibbs went on: ‘The decision to shoot or delay in that split second fell on him.’
He told the jury that Mr Blake’s actions before taking the shot and after are not criticised.
‘At that moment just as before and just as after, he was doing his honest best according to his training to interpret what he was seeing and anticipate what would happen if he didn’t fire in a 17-second incident,’ he said.
In his initial account of what had happened, given on September 6, Blake said Mr Kaba had driven the Audi ‘at great speed’ towards him and a colleague, referred to as E156.
‘I had a genuine belief that either of us could be killed and moved right, out of the way,’ the officer said.
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He then moved round to the front of the Audi and said he challenged the driver, saying something like ‘armed police stop the vehicle’, the statement read.
‘At this point the driver reversed back at great speed as fast as he could, directly towards my colleagues who were out on foot approaching the vehicle,’ it went on.
‘The male had already shown a propensity to use violence and was happy to use any means to escape and I had a genuine held belief that one or many of my colleagues could be killed by the car, and that the driver would not stop his attempt to escape at any cost.
‘I then made the decision to incapacitate the driver due to the imminent threat to my colleagues and took one aimed shot at the driver. He immediately slumped and the car stopped.’
Prosecutor Tom Little KC told the jury: ‘It will be a matter for you to consider but in a number of material respects that account is false, we say, in parts, and exaggerated in other parts.
‘It is clear from this initial account that the defendant’s focus would appear to have been the risk to his colleagues at the point of the discharge of his firearm and not to himself.’
Opening the case yesterday, he said it was unclear whether there was room for Mr Kaba to have escaped and driven away.
He added: ‘There was, we say, no real or immediate threat to the life of anybody present at the scene, and at the all-important point in time when the defendant fired that fatal shot.’
Blake denies murder. The trial continues.
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