A police marksman who fatally shot an unarmed man thought his colleagues were in “extreme danger” at the time, a public inquiry has heard. Anthony Grainger, 36, was shot in the chest as he sat in a car in the village of Culcheth, Cheshire, on the evening of 3 March 2012.
On the second day of the inquiry into the shooting, Liverpool crown court heard testimony from some of the 16 armed officers who swooped on Grainger’s stolen red Audi. The officer who fired the fatal shot – referred to in court as Q9 – said he believed his fellow officers were in grave danger when he saw Grainger lower his right hand out of view.
But the inquiry also heard that when he moved his hand towards his groin, the victim might have been reacting to a CS gas canister that was thrown into the vehicle.
In a witness statement a day after the shooting, the officer said he shouted: “Armed police, show me your hands” as he pointed his Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine-gun at the occupants of the Audi.
Q9 described how Grainger, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, initially raised his hands, but then his right hand disappeared from view. The officer said: “I saw the driver lower his hand to his groin area. It was a deliberate movement, as if he was grabbing a firearm.”
He added in a later witness statement: “I thought he was reaching for a firearm. I quickly realised the approaching officers were in extreme danger.” Q9 then fired one round through the windscreen of the red Audi, striking the unarmed Grainger in the chest.
The father-of-two slumped back into his seat, according to Q9, as armed officers swarmed on the vehicle to arrest the two other occupants, David Totton and Joseph Travers.
A postmortem examination found that a 9mm hollow point bullet had hit Grainger in the left side of his chest, passing through his left lung and pulmonary artery before it lodged in his right chest wall. The inquiry heard conflicting testimony about whether Q9 fired the fatal shot before a fellow officer, known as X9, threw a CS gas canister into the Audi, incapacitating the occupants.
Jason Beer QC, counsel to the inquiry, said it would investigate whether the movement of Grainger’s right hand was an instinctive reaction to the CS gas. He said: “If Q9 was not the first officer to discharge his firearm, which is a possibility, then the issue arises as to whether the actions of X9 in firing the gas canister could have caused Anthony Grainger to react in the way that Q9 describes.”
Beer also told the inquiry that the specific type of CS gas used in the operation – known as a CS dispersal canister (CSDC) – had not been authorised by the home secretary. He said that Ian Arundale, a former chief constable and national lead for armed policing, had reviewed the operation and found that the CS gas “was not appropriate in the circumstances because neither its deployment nor its use had been authorised by the home secretary”.
One of Q9’s colleagues, known as W9, said the shooting sounded “like ice breaking”. Others described how they attempted to pull Grainger out of the vehicle through the driver’s side window before realising he had been shot.
Another officer, X7, said he thought Grainger was resisting, so he “made contact” with the suspect’s upper arm using the muzzle of his gun: “At this I saw his eyes roll back and he slumped to his right-hand side.”
Senior officers believed Grainger and his associates were planning an armed robbery when they ordered police marksmen to strike shortly after 7pm on 3 March 2012. Each of the 16 police marksmen, in four unmarked cars, was armed with at least three weapons, including a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine-gun, a self-loading pistol and a Taser. Two of the officers also carried shotguns and CS gas canisters.
The inquiry heard on Tuesday how a police expert concluded that the operation was based on incorrect intelligence that was “out of date” and that four of the five commanding officers had incomplete or insufficient training.
The inquiry, expected to conclude on 21 April, continues.
