Met firearms officer made 'false and exaggerated' claims about his fears before shooting Chris Kaba

Met Police firearms officer Martyn Blake told bosses he killed Chris Kaba, 24, with a single shot because he feared his colleagues would be 'crushed' beneath Chris Kaba's car, a court heard

A gun cop's claim he feared for his life before shooting a driver dead was "false and exaggerated", a court heard.

Firearms officer Martyn Blake told bosses he killed Chris Kaba, 24, with a single shot because he feared his colleagues would be "crushed" beneath the wheels of his fleeing Audi Q8, a trial heard. Met Police cop Blake, 40, is accused of murdering Mr Kaba after "a stop with extraction" was carried out on his vehicle in September 2022 in Streatham, south London.

Prosecutors claim his decision to pull the trigger and fire a single shot through the front window and into Mr Kaba's forehead was "not justified" and he acted after becoming "angry, frustrated and annoyed". Today, at the Old Bailey, jurors heard Blake said he jumped from his marked BMW X5 and aimed his .223 Remington semi-automatic rifle at Mr Kaba.

Prosecutors say Mr Kaba's vehicle - which had been linked to a gunshot incident the previous night - was "penned in" and he could not escape the situation. But in an initial account to his superiors, Blake said Mr Kaba had driven the vehicle "at great speed towards myself" and another officer.

He said: "I had a genuine belief that either of us could be killed and moved right out of the way. The driver then rammed our car, which was behind me as well as a parked car and stopped, wedged. Seeing the car was stopped I went round to the front and again challenged the driver saying something like, 'Armed police, stop the vehicle', at this point the driver reversed back at great speed as fast as he could, directly towards my colleagues who were out on foot approaching the vehicle.

"The male had already shown a propensity to use violence and was happy to use any means to escape and I had a genuine held belief that one or many of my colleagues could be killed by the car, and that the driver would not stop his attempt to escape at any cost. I then made the decision to incapacitate the driver due to the imminent threat to my colleagues and took one aimed shot at the driver. He immediately slumped and the car stopped.”

Jurors were told Blake said he felt "at grave risk of serious injury by virtue of the ramming of our vehicle and could easily have been killed due to the ferocity of the impact of the Audi moving forward". He said it was "his belief was that if he had not discharged his weapon to incapacitate the driver he would have watched one or more colleagues die and would have failed in his duty to them in accordance with his training".

Blake said he fired his weapon, hoping it would "make contact with the driver's chest". However prosecutors claim Blakes' version of the shooting was "false" and "exaggerated". They claimed Mr Kaba's vehicle reached a maximum speed of just 12mph during the confrontation and the engine was not revving.

Blake denies murder. The trial at the Old Bailey continues.