PC dragged to his death by getaway car going 43mph
A PoLiCeMAn died when he became caught in a tow rope behind a getaway car, a trial heard yesterday.
Andrew Harper’s uniform was torn off as he was dragged along at an average speed of 43mph for more than a mile.
The 28-year-old constable had been trying to stop the occupants of the car from stealing a quad bike. The driver, Henry Long, 19, and two passengers, Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, both 18, are charged with his murder. Long sped down the road in Berkshire in such a way that Mr Harper was ‘swung side to side like a pendulum in an effort to dislodge him’, Jonathan Laidlaw QC told the old Bailey.
The prosecutor said the policeman became disentangled only after around 90 seconds and died naked apart from his boots and socks. The case is being heard in front of a fresh jury after the original trial was abandoned due to the pandemic.
Mr Harper and his colleague Andrew Shaw were driving back to Abingdon police station in oxfordshire when they responded to a reported theft four hours after their shift should have ended. Mr Laidlaw told the court: ‘Going beyond the call of duty, as it were, would cost Andrew Harper his life.’
Long, Cole and Bowers had stolen a £10,000 quad bike from a front garden in Bradfield Southend following a confrontation with its owner, Peter Wallis.
Mr Laidlaw said the thieves were determined to take the bike ‘ whatever the cost’ and had not only worn gloves and masks to avoid detection, but had tools that might easily have been used as weapons.
The Thames Valley Police officers intercepted their Seat Toledo in a lane at around 11.30pm last August 15. Cole was sitting on the quad bike being towed by the Toledo but jumped off and detached it from the rope, the court heard.
Footage from the police vehicle played to jurors showed him running after the Toledo before trying to jump in
‘Swung side to side’
through the passenger window. Mr Harper leapt out of his unmarked patrol car to chase Cole.
‘PC Harper must have quite unwittingly stepped, with both feet, into the loop made of the strapping trailed behind the Seat,’ said Mr Laidlaw.
‘The prosecution case is that it must have been very quickly clear to Henry Long, who was after all at the wheel of the car, that the vehicle was now dragging somebody behind it.’
The three defendants, who admit theft but deny murder, were arrested later at a nearby travellers’ site.
Mr Harper’s parents Phil and Debbie, his widow Lissie and brother Sean were in court yesterday. The trial is expected to last up to five weeks and Long admits manslaughter.