The man accused of murdering the Labour MP Jo Cox threw his hands in the air and declared himself to be a “political activist” when approached by police moments after the gun and knife attack, his trial has heard.
When Thomas Mair began to lower his hands, two unarmed officers charged at him and rugby-tackled him to the ground.
Craig Nicholls, a constable with West Yorkshire police, told the Old Bailey on Wednesday that he and his colleague PC Jonathan Wright had been instructed to search for a man involved in a shooting in Birstall on 16 June.
They saw Mair walking nearby, got out of their car and ordered him to drop the black holdall he was carrying, said Nicholls.
“He put his arms up and just said, ‘It’s me,’” said Nicholls. “We ran towards him. He came to put his hands towards his shirt. We rugby-tackled him to the ground.”
Nicholls said it was “a reasonably heavy impact”, which left Mair with a head injury. When Wright found a firearm in the holdall, Mair said: “I am a political activist,” according to Nicholls.
Mair was handcuffed and arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. He was taken for treatment at Leeds General Infirmary before being taken to a police station for questioning.
Simon Russell Flint QC, defending, put it to Nicholls and Wright that Mair said nothing to police at any time during his arrest. Both officers said he did.
The jury heard that police recovered a sawn-off .22 rifle from the bag Mair had dropped. It contained two rounds in its magazine, a third in the chamber and the safety catch was off. Two knives were also recovered and a plastic bag containing a number of .22 bullets was found in Mair’s pocket.
Mair, 53, an unemployed gardener from Birstall, West Yorkshire, is charged with the murder of Cox, possession of a firearm with intent to commit an offence, possession of a dagger and grievous bodily harm to a passerby, Bernard Carter Kenny.
He declined to enter a plea when he appeared at the Old Bailey last month. As a result, not guilty pleas to all four charges were entered on his behalf.
Cox was killed during the EU referendum campaign, during which she supported the remain side. She was 41 when she died and had two children, then aged five and three.
Mair allegedly struck as the MP was on her way to a meeting with voters at the library in Birstall. The town lies within Batley and Spen, the West Yorkshire constituency to which she had been elected in the 2015 general election.
Her final moments were captured by CCTV. The prosecution described a “dynamic, fast-moving and shocking” assault. When the footage was shown to the jury on Monday, Mair stared straight ahead, ignoring the screens placed around the court.
Mair allegedly said “Britain first” and “keep Britain independent” while carrying out the attack. He is also alleged to have accessed a string of internet sites about Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, the Waffen SS, Israel, matricide and serial killers in the days before Cox was killed.
The jury heard that Mair also viewed Cox’s Twitter feed and looked at the Wikipedia entry for Ian Gow, the Conservative MP murdered by the IRA in 1990. The prosecution said Mair viewed pages about .22 ammunition, including one that offered an answer to the question: “Is a .22 round deadly enough to kill with one shot to a human’s head?”
Items later recovered from his home showed Mair had “strong political and ideological interests”, said Richard Whittam QC, prosecuting.
The case continues.
