7.09, Sunday morning, and Sheku is caught on dashcam ...16 minutes before he lay dying
He thumped and chased car with knife, probe told
THE moment Sheku Bayoh was first spotted on a motorist’s dashcam just minutes before he died was shown to an inquiry yesterday.
In the short clip, the father of two – wearing a white T-shirt and dark trousers – is seen emerging from beside a set of pedestrian lights and walking down the side of the road.
A neighbour of Mr Bayoh yesterday identified him from the clip, which was captured shortly before 999 calls began to flood in to police reporting ‘a man with a knife’.
The footage was filmed at 7.09am on Sunday, May 3, 2015, by Harry Kolberg as he drove on Templehall Avenue, Kirkcaldy, Fife, with his son.
The motorist told the inquiry yesterday that he pulled over and phoned the police after seeing the man, who had a ‘clenched fist’ and came within ‘arm’s length’ of his Peugeot car.
He said: ‘After we passed him, (my son) said: ‘Dad, he’s chasing the car, and it looks like he’s got a knife in his hand.
‘I had a quick look in the mirror and he was chasing the car.’
Mr Kolberg watched in his rearview mirror as the man ran across the road towards an industrial estate, and added: ‘My first initial thought was that he thought, “Oh, he’s phoning the police and I better disappear”.’
The inquiry heard a recording of Mr Kolberg’s 999 call. He told the police: ‘Just as I passed him he thumped my car. It looked like he was carrying a knife and he started chasing the car.’
Other witnesses also phoned 999, and at 7.20am police vehicles were seen on CCTV arriving in nearby Hayfield Road.
Just after 7.25am, an officer called for an ambulance as Mr Bayoh was ‘unconscious’ and ‘not responsive.’
Mr Bayoh was pronounced dead in hospital after being restrained by police officers.
David Grey, 62, who had also been at the scene, told the inquiry that he spotted a man with ‘what appeared to be a knife blade’ about seven inches long, walking towards his van.
The witness said that at this point, another driver going in the opposite direction told him: ‘There’s a man up there with a knife, turn around.’ Mr Grey said: ‘His eyes were very, very wide open and as he walked towards me, it was more like a march, like he was intent on going somewhere, on a mission type thing.
‘He also walked with his palms open, and in his left hand I saw what appeared to be a blade, a knife blade.’
He added: ‘When I see someone like that, the first thing I think is it’s drink or drugs that have caused their eyes to be so dilated and so open, and a fixed stare looking straight ahead.
‘That’s what I thought. He was very purposeful in his walk.
‘The way he was marching and marching down the road, it was like he was going to do something, take revenge, I don’t know, on someone down the road.’
But a close friend of Mr Bayoh’s told the inquiry in Edinburgh that his ‘brother’ was murdered at the hands of the police. Kahid Saeed, 38, who had known Mr Bayoh since he was 17, told Angela Grahame, QC, senior counsel to the inquiry: ‘The truth is he was murdered in police custody.’
A written statement from Mr Saeed displayed to the inquiry showed Mr Bayoh had taken drugs the night before he died.
The inquiry also heard from Neil Morgan, who lived opposite Mr Bayoh in Kirkcaldy.
He told how, as he returned home at around 7am after a night shift, he saw his neighbour – who he knew as ‘Chris’ – fighting with someone in a nearby garden.
Mr Morgan said he saw Mr Bayoh was carrying a kitchen knife about eight inches long, adding: ‘He was tapping it on his leg, and I said to him, “You can’t go round with that knife, you’ll get done”.
‘Then he turned around to me and he said “It’s not even sharp”, and sort of poked it at my belly.’
When Miss Grahame asked about his reaction to this, Mr Morgan replied: ‘Nothing, really. I certainly didn’t feel threatened by him.’
He added: ‘He was calm, he didn’t seem in a rage. He was himself, but with a knife.’
The inquiry, before Lord Bracadale, continues