PC’S KILLERS OUT IN 8 YEARS
Teenage thieves who dragged Andrew Harper to death behind their car are jailed – and STILL they show no remorse
THREE killers who showed ‘no remorse’ after dragging hero PC Andrew Harper to his death during a police chase could be back on the streets in just eight years.
Ringleader Henry Long, 19, and accomplices Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole, both 18, were yesterday spared life terms for their crime – described by the judge as ‘close to murder in its seriousness’.
PC Harper’s grief-stricken widow Lissie, 29, told the Old
Bailey how since her husband’s death she had been plunged into a ‘lost and endless world of numb despair’. And last night the Prime
Minister paid a heartfelt tribute, describing PC Harper as ‘the very best of our police – and all of us’.
A No 10 spokesman said: ‘His heroism touched the whole nation... we will not forget his sacrifice.’
Sentenced yesterday for manslaughter, Long, who told police he ‘didn’t give a f*** about any of this’, when he was initially charged with murder, was jailed for 16 years.
Judge Mr Justice Edis warned that if he were left on the streets it would only be a ‘matter of time’ before someone else died.
The men had killed a ‘brave, talented officer’ who was ‘going above and beyond his duty in order to provide a public service’, he said.
Bowers and Cole, who both have learning difficulties, were each jailed for 13 years.
A fourth man, Thomas King, 22, was jailed for two years after pleading guilty to conspiring to steal a quad bike. He was not in the car on the night of PC Harper’s death.
Sources said that when the group were cleared of murder last Friday, parties were held at their houses.
Slow clapping from a member of Mrs Harper’s family was heard shortly after the sentences were handed down, while the defendants’ relatives gasped and some wept.
Under rules introduced in April, the men will have to serve at least two-thirds of their sentence – not
‘Talented, brave young officer’
half – before they are eligible for release. This means Long could be out in just under 11 years and his co-accused in eight years and eight months.
John Apter, chairman of the Police Federation, said last night: ‘The killing of a police officer should see those responsible face the rest of their lives in prison... PC Andrew Harper was killed on duty in the most brutal and horrific way; his wife, family, colleagues and the public deserve justice. This is not justice.’
The officer was killed after he responded to reports of a quad bike theft in rural Berkshire in August last year. Long, Bowers and Cole had ‘carefully planned’ the theft, and ‘acquired’ a high-powered Seat in the preceding days for the purpose of evading police.
The group made a living stealing, with Long’s father and grandfather described as thieves.
In mitigation his own barrister said: ‘It is not too surprising he followed in their footsteps and he too became a thief.’
The gang attached the quad bike to the car using tow rope, with Long in the driving seat.
When PC Harper attempted to apprehend the men, his ankles became entangled in the rope before the group sped off, dragging the officer for more than a mile along a country lane. His injuries were so ‘catastrophic’ that witnesses mistook him for a dead deer.
Sentencing the men, Mr Justice Edis said: ‘Sometimes death may be caused by an act of gross carelessness, sometimes it is very close to a case of murder in its seriousness.
That is so, here.’ He told the men: ‘You killed a talented and brave young police officer who was going above and beyond his duty in order to provide a public service, and you did so because you had deliberately decided to expose any police officer who got in your way to a risk of death. You decided that your freedom to commit crime was more important than his life.’
Earlier, the judge made the unusual decision to issue a statement denying there was any evidence that jurors had been ‘pressured’ or ‘intimidated’ into reaching their decision to acquit the defendants of murder.
It followed a letter from Mrs Harper to the Prime Minister and Home Secretary Priti Patel calling for a retrial over jury ‘nobbling’ fears.
Detective Superintendent Stuart Blaik, of Thames Valley Police, said after the sentencing: ‘These are three people who I do not believe have ever shown an ounce of genuine remorse or contrition.’ He added: ‘We will always remember PC Harper and we will never forget the ultimate sacrifice he made.’
‘4 weeks was all I had to call him my husband’
YESTERDAY Lissie Harper took to the witness stand of Court 8 of the Old Bailey to lay bare, in heart-wrenching detail, how PC Andrew Harper’s death had torn her world apart. Having to pause twice to compose herself, Mrs Harper, 29, said her life now felt ‘bleak, hopeless, irreparable’, with a ‘hollowness that will never be filled’. This is her full statement:
THIS is my third attempt at writing a victim impact statement.
After many words of anguish, scriptures of love and testimonies of heartbreak, I sit at this task with an emptiness that I without pretence admit that in an attempt to describe what impact Andrew’s death has had on me, I simply find myself in a lost and endless world of numb despair. Perhaps the reason that this question in particular defeats me is because until and unless you have stood in my shoes, unless you have had the immense misfortune of losing a husband or a wife, a soul mate, true love or beloved partner whom you intended to be with until your dying day, then how is this grief and loss even possible to describe?
I have used every word in my vocabulary to describe the pain, torture and hopelessness that I feel, I have written poems and letters and messages of love and devastation over the indescribable trauma that I have been forced to endure these past 11 months.
I have screamed and cried and broken down in fractured defeat and yet when it is this moment that I am asked to explain my impacted life that the hollowness of loss truly appears.
My husband was brutally killed four weeks after our wedding day... What impact has this had on my life?
Need I repeat the devastating details and the cruelty in which this occurred? Should I speak again of how we were robbed of our future? Of the plans that were stolen from us? Should I describe my torment over the children that will never come to be?
Or, like so many people, are these heartbreaking details etched into your mind in the shattering way that they will for ever remain in mine?
Four weeks was all I had to call him my husband, four weeks to be called his wife. My life often feels bleak, hopeless, irreparable. My desolate nights bring no rest, no time for reprieve from this utter turmoil.
Every aspect of my life since Andrew was taken is bitterly different.
Every moment of my life before Andrew was taken was imprinted with his love and his presence. A fact in which I alone can only truly understand.
So not only did these men take my true, beautiful love away from me, not only did they rob a brother, son, uncle and friend from all who love him, but they took our future too.
They took more than one life away that day. They stole the person that I used to be, the happiness that we shared and the beautiful plans we had made together.
That night as I opened the door to the stranger in uniform before me, everything I had known in my life to be true was robbed away.
Every ounce of beautiful peace, gone. So in answer to the question of how Andrew’s death has impacted me... well you would be justified in your knowledge that I am without question a mere shadow of the person I once was, broken, distraught, beaten.
An empty shell, void of the contented life I once loved.
Please do not let the sacrifice that he was forced and unknowingly made to give stand for nothing. He gave everything.
A bitter reality that I must face and endure for the rest of my life, every second, every minute, every day.
Whatever is decided today in these courts... it will never bring Andrew back.
Andrew will never grace us with his smile, his compassion and his selfless generosity and love as he used to do.
I will spend every day of the rest of my life with a hollowness that will never ever be filled. An indescribable reality that no amount of words will ever fully reveal.
Yet again I search around for the words to express my heartbreak, yet each description of grief appears inadequate and incomplete.