A Metropolitan police firearms officer may have been “angry, frustrated and annoyed” when he shot a suspect in the head despite him posing no imminent threat, a jury has been told.
Chris Kaba, 24, was killed on 5 September 2022 in Streatham, south London after a single bullet was fired through the front window of the car he was driving by a police marksman, Martyn Blake, 40, who denies murder.
Kaba was followed by police while driving an Audi car, with the vehicle suspected by police of potential involvement in a firearms incident the night before. Armed officers stopped and surrounded the car, and the jury was told the vehicle made a “concerted attempt” to escape, its wheels spinning at least at one point.
In footage and reconstructions shown to the jury, at least six armed officers had decamped from their cars and were yards from the Audi.
The prosecution told the Old Bailey that Kaba’s car was “penned in” from in front and behind by police vehicles, with both of the driver’s hands on the steering wheel. It was stationary at the time Blake fired the single fatal shot, the court heard.
Opening the case, the prosecutor Tom Little KC said at the point Blake decided to open fire there was no imminent danger to the police officers surrounding the car. Police had shouted at Kaba and made attempts to break his vehicle window and detain him.
Little said the crown would ask the jury to consider whether a standoff between Kaba, who drove the Audi forwards and backwards trying to escape, and officers “caused the defendant 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.”
Little said the crown would argue that it “was far from obvious” that there was space for Kaba to escape, and that his vehicle had become penned in: “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.”
Little added: “In driving forwards towards the police vehicle that was blocking his [Kaba’s] immediate path there had been an element of initial danger, albeit that the speed … was not particularly fast.
“None of the authorised firearms officers were injured. Chris Kaba then only drove backwards a short distance before he was shot and killed. His vehicle was stationary at that time.”
Little said: “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.”
Members of Kaba’s family, including his parents, sat in the well of the court, metres from Blake in the dock, as Little outlined the case to the jury of nine men and three women.
Little said that, the night before Kaba was shot, a suspected firearms incident in Brixton was reported to police. The Audi Kaba was driving was linked to that incident, the jury heard.
Details of the Audi, including its registration, were included in the specialist firearms command daily briefing circulated on 5 September, the court heard.
At 9.51pm on 5 September, officers in a police car parked on Camberwell Church Street spotted the Audi. Police decided to follow it, and a decision was made that the Audi should be stopped by armed officers, the jury was told.
It came to a halt in Kirkstall Gardens, where the shot that killed Kaba was fired. Little said: “The cause of his death was a single gunshot wound to the head with associated catastrophic traumatic brain injury.”
The trial continues.
