UK police officer on trial for murder of Black man says he never meant to kill
By Sam Tobin
LONDON (Reuters) – A British police officer charged with the murder of a Black man in London two years ago on Tuesday said he “did not intend to kill” when he fired the fatal shot.
Chris Kaba, who was unarmed, died from a single gunshot to the head after his car, which had been linked to a reported shooting the previous evening, was stopped in the Streatham area of south London on Sept. 5 2022.
Kaba tried to drive away while boxed in by police vehicles when firearms officer Martyn Blake shot him through the car windscreen, prosecutors said at the start of the trial.
Prosecutor Tom Little told jurors at London’s Old Bailey court earlier this month that Blake’s decision to shoot Kaba “was not reasonably justified or justifiable”.
Blake, 40, denies murder and said on Monday he thought there was an “imminent threat” to his colleagues if he had not shot Kaba.
Under cross-examination by Little on Tuesday, Blake said he intended to incapacitate Kaba but not kill him.
“My whole intention was to stop that vehicle, which I thought was about to run my colleagues over,” Blake said.
Little said a bullet from the police-issued carbine travels at more than 800 metres a second, breaking the sound barrier.
He asked: “You thought firing a bullet at supersonic speed … was just going to cause, what – minor harm to the driver of the vehicle?”
Blake said that his intention was simply to stop the vehicle, which he believed posed a threat to other police officers.
The officer’s lawyer Patrick Gibbs has told the jury they had seen footage of the incident multiple times during the trial, but it had happened to Blake once “without the luxury of knowing at any moment what was going to happen next”.
