VICTIMS OF 999 COPS’ CARNAGE
THE deaths of two young women hit during highspeed 999 police car callouts sparked pleas for an urgent review last night.
Campaigners said rules on fast response driving by officers must be re-examined.
Holly Burke, 28, died after a car being chased by police ploughed into her Ford Fiesta.
At almost the same time, a police car answering a 999 call mowed down and killed 26-year-old Eritrean refugee Luam Gebremariam.
Both women died in separate incidents on Tuesday night.
Ms Burke’s car was hit by a Renault Scenic which had been chased through the streets of Birmingham for 15 minutes before police deployed a stinger device in a bid to stop it.
The Renault carried on at speed
and smashed into the off-duty police community support officer’s vehicle.
Paramedics and police at the scene battled to save Ms Burke but her injuries proved fatal.
The 48-year-old driver of the Renault was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and driving under the influence of drugs.
The tragedy happened shortly before midnight on Tuesday.
At around the same time in Walthamstow, east London, a police car ran down Ms Gebremariam.
The driver frantically tried to save the victim as she lay on the icy road. But she was pronounced dead at the scene shortly afterwards.
Last night, the Independent Office for Police Conduct launched separate inquiries into the deaths amid concern about the number of people killed by police vehicles.
A total of 28 people died in 2017 after they were hit by police cars involved in pursuits or answering 999 calls.
The death toll for the past five years is believed to be 115.
In a third accident this week, a woman pedestrian was seriously injured when she was hit by a marked police car in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, around noon yesterday. A spokesman for the road safety charity Brake said: “Any death on the road involving the emergency services has to give serious cause for concern.
“We would encourage police chiefs to review and update their guidance for officers responding to emergency calls or engaged in ‘blue light’ pursuits.”
Nick Lloyd, acting head of road safety for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said: “The police need to respond to emergencies that involve threats to public safety as quickly as possible, which often means exceeding speed limits on a blue light run. However, this type of driving also creates a significant extra risk to the police officers in the car and to other road users.
“The public safety risk to which the police are responding, and the risk created by the emergency drive, must be balanced. Emergency blue light drives should only be undertaken when essential, and by authorised and trained police drivers.”
Ms Burke, who had been a PCSO for 14 months, was a valued member of the uniformed neighbourhood police team in north Birmingham.
Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson commented: “The loss of PCSO Holly Burke is tragic. She was greatly valued by West Midlands Police and the communities she served.”
One woman witness of Ms Gebremariam’s death described hearing a sound like a “gunshot” as the police car hit her close to the YMCA where the refugee lived.
The 50-year-old neighbour said: “I looked out of the window and on the road I could see the car door open. There was one officer in the car.
“The girl was crossing outside my door. The car had a huge dent and her body was thrown all the way down the road – you can see it must have been going very fast.”
The woman’s 18-year-old son was also a witness. “My son saw it all,” she said. “He was coming back from being out with his friend and he came running and knocked on the door.
“He was crossing the road at the same time as her. I asked how he knew she was dead and he said, ‘Mummy,
anyone hit at that speed and thrown that far would be dead.’
“The impact moved her to the other end, forward towards the traffic lights.
“Her shoe was on the other side of road, just lying there.
“My son called the ambulance and the officer who was there was doing CPR, but it was clear she was dead.”
Neighbour Gilbert James, 44, told how he “heard a loud bang and police sirens”. He said there was a “big impact” and the police car windscreen had been “completely smashed”.
He said: “The police officer driving appeared in shock but no police officers appeared injured.”
Officers are trying to trace Ms Gebremariam’s family in Eritrea to break the news of her death.
The accidents brought back grim memories for Teresa Forde whose 24-year-old daughter Natalie was killed by a car as it was being chased by police in north London in 2008.
Mrs Forde, 61, said: “It is chilling to see another beautiful young girl of a similar age come to this end.
“It is heartbreaking to see such tragic circumstances impact another young life. When a life like this is so needlessly lost and wasted, it begs the question as to what precautions have been put in place by the police to avoid situations like this.
“We fought for years to get to the bottom of what happened to Natalie – I would hate to think that has been wasted and I don’t want her death to be in vain.”
THE death of 28-year-old Holly Burke, an off-duty police community support officer in Birmingham, is a tragic waste of a life of a young woman dedicated to serving her community.
It is of grave concern that she was killed by a car whose driver was being pursued by police officers.
As Teresa Forde, whose 24-year-old daughter Natalie was killed as a result of a police car chase in 2008, said: “It is chilling to see another beautiful young girl of a similar age come to this end.”
Regional director of the Independent Office for Police Conduct Derrick Campbell has pledged investigators would work “to determine if appropriate policies and procedures were followed”.
However, this sad incident suggests that more needs to be done to review whether the procedures for police chases, particularly through cities, are themselves satisfactory.
This newspaper certainly agrees that potentially dangerous criminals should be pursued, but care needs to be taken.
So it may be that the police officers involved were following procedures correctly. If so, then forces need to look to change those rules to ensure that the risk of more accidents like this is not repeated.