A police driver who was following a teenager riding a scooter when the 18-year-old was killed in a road crash, has said the statement he gave shortly after the incident had been “littered with errors”.
The officer told an inquest that he had been trying to stop the moped driven by Henry Hicks on the evening of 19 December 2014, when the teenager lost control of the bike in Wheelwright Street, north London, and suffered fatal head injuries in the crash.
The inquest into Hicks’ death heard that he was being followed by two unmarked police cars, both of which had activated their sirens and blue lights because they suspected the teenager of potential drug dealing.
But the officer, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the jury that his initial collision report, given immediately after the incident, was not an accurate account of what happened.
The driver, referred to in court as officer A, told the jury that he did not believe Hicks had been aware that he was being followed before he lost control. “I know in my heart he hadn’t seen me,” he said.
He acknowledged, however, that in his first account, taken by a fellow officer at the scene of the crash, he had said Hicks had ridden off “as soon as I put my blue lights on”, suggesting the rider had been fully aware of the two vehicles following him.
Officer A had also stated that he had lost sight of the moped at one point and that he had helped give first aid to the injured man, but he told the jury that both these statements were incorrect.
Asked by the Mary Hassell, senior coroner for inner north London, to explain the disparity in his accounts of the evening, the officer said he had been in shock after coming across “a very hysterical and traumatic scene” as the young man lay injured. He had no recollection of giving his first statement.
Struggling to control his emotions, officer A said: “This is not a true reflection of what happened that night. This was taken [shortly] after witnessing a terrible, tragic, sad incident, and I was in shock when I gave this account and signed it as correct.”
The officer denied that the incident had met the conditions for a formal police pursuit, which would have required him to alert a police control centre and seek authorisation to continue.
But Nicholas Rhodes QC, representing the Hicks family, suggested to the officer that he was driving “as fast as [he] could” to stop the teenager, “because you know, as you told a police officer half an hour after the incident, that you were in pursuit”. Officer A said: “That’s not correct, sir.”
The officer denied Rhodes’s suggestion that the incident had been “a frolic of your own ... and it’s that that you regret, because it had unintended consequences”. He replied: “Sir, I have never had a drag race with a moped.”
The inquest is taking place at the Royal Courts of Justice for the remainder of the officers’ evidence, before returning to St Pancras coroners court in London next week.
