Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
COP KILLER BACK ON ROAD
Banned after mowing down PC.. caught with no licence, tax or insurance
A COP killer who mowed down a police officer is back behind the wheel while banned from driving.
Shameless Wayne Rule, who killed PC Jon Odell in a hit-and-run, has NO licence, NO car tax and NO insurance.
He is pictured, right, brazenly driving the Audi A3. Asked about cops being killed in the line of duty, Rule, 42, told the Mirror yesterday: “I’m not interested.”
BANNED driver Wayne Rule steps from his car in an image that will horrify relatives of the cop he killed in a hit-and-run.
The career criminal killed PC Jon Odell, 30, while trying to evade a police speed check.
He was jailed and has been banned from the road virtually ever since – yet keeps driving.
Rule has never passed his L-test and his Audi A3 – registered with the DVLA as being off the road – is untaxed and uninsured.
Yet the Sunday Mirror spotted him driving three times in the past two days alone – after being alerted he was again showing contempt for the law.
Unwitting neighbours greeted Rule with a cheery “good morning” as he got behind the wheel in Spalding, Lincs – 180 miles from Margate, Kent, where he killed PC Odell.
Rule was on his fourth driving ban when he admitted running down the PC during a Christmas speed check in 2000. The officer was hit by Rule’s Vauxhall Astra, thrown against the windscreen and carried along on the roof.
He suffered head injuries, broken limbs and died from internal bleeding four hours later.
DISQUALIFIED
Rule was jailed for nine years and banned from the road for 15 years.
A further 30-month ban – keeping him off the roads until January 2020 – was imposed for again driving while disqualified two years ago.
On that occasion Rule was given a 16-week suspended jail term and a curfew, and was ordered to undergo drug rehabilitation.
But days ago we spotted jobless Rule flouting the law once more as he hopped in the Audi in a communal car park outside a block of flats.
After he drove off one mum told us: “Wayne’s often going here and there in his car. He’s a big fella and it’s a small car so his bulging belly rests on the steering wheel. He keeps himself to himself. He’s come up here from Kent for a quieter life.”
Another neighbour said: “He’s got a girlfriend and a little dog but I never see him walk it.”
In 2001 Maidstone Crown Court was told Rule’s two terrified passengers heard him shout, “Shall I go for it?” before he accelerated and tried to swerve past
PC Odell. Judge Andrew Patience said the officer must have been terror struck. He told Rule: “PC Odell was more than 220 metres away when you saw him. You could have stopped, you should have stopped, but you did not. Knowing you were a disqualified driver, you thought only of yourself, your desire to get away.
“You had a total disregard for human life or suffering. You collided with the officer, killing him as he was carrying out his duty.”
The PC’s girlfriend, Cathy Kidd, said at the time: “I struggle to find the words to express the emptiness left by his death. Jon was a police officer because he believed he was doing something to help others. To have his life taken by someone who had no regard for others is beyond contempt.” The officer’s death triggered nationwide fury. That anger was echoed last month when newlywed Lissie Harper was widowed after her PC hubby Andy, 28, was mown down and killed while responding to a reported burglary in Berkshire.
When Rule was sentenced in 2001, the court heard he had convictions going back to 1992. These included taking a vehicle, drink-driving, driving without licence or insurance, affray, assault, criminal damage, burglary, assault on police and abusive behaviour. When the Sunday Mirror approached Rule yesterday he confirmed he lived in a first-floor flat with his mastiff. But he refused to say why he regularly drives an untaxed car while disqualified.
Asked for his reaction to police officers being killed in the line of duty, he said: “I’m not interested.”
We will make our evidence available to police.