The police marksman who shot Chris Kaba dead should not be held to superhuman ‘RoboCop’ standards, his murder trial heard.
Martyn Blake does not have the ‘nanosecond’-response reactions of a computer and reacted to the chaos and danger of the fatal police operation ‘as a human being with a human brain,’ his defence barrister said.
Blake, 40, denies murdering Mr Kaba by shooting the unarmed 24-year-old in the forehead as he attempted to escape police in a two-tonne Audi Q8 in south London.
Officers tried to stop the car on September 5, 2022, as it had been linked to a shooting the previous evening. But Kaba tried to ram it through police vehicles until Blake fired through his windscreen, the Old Bailey heard.
Tom Little KC, prosecuting, has previously shown the jury a graphic indicating that the Audi had been stationary when Blake fired his weapon, and that none of his colleagues had been close enough to the vehicle to have been in danger.
Photo issued of rapper Chris Kaba. Metropolitan Police marksman Martyn Blake is on trial at the old Bailey, accused of the murder of 24-year-old Mr Kaba in south London on September 6 2022
Helen Lumuanganu (second left) and Prosper Kaba (left) the mother and father of Chris Kaba arriving at the Old Bailey, central London, where Metropolitan Police firearms officer Martyn Blake is charged with the murder of Chris in south London
Helen Lumuanganu the mother of Chris Kaba hugs friends alongside Prosper Kaba (second from right) the father of Chris Kaba outside the Old Bailey, central London
But Patrick Gibbs KC, defending, argued: ‘The split second of the shot is not the right freeze frame, is it? If Mr Blake were RoboCop with total vision and nanosecond reactions like a computer, then it would be.
‘If the way he saw the world was like the internal screen of RoboCop, able to respond just like that to everything, then maybe you would be right as the split second of the shot would be like the split second on screen. But he isn’t, is he? None of us is.’
In his closing speech at the Old Bailey, Mr Gibbs continued: ‘There’s thinking time, there’s processing time. How long will it have taken him to process?
‘He is not a robot, he is a human being with a human brain working to the best of his ability.’
Officers had lost the element of surprise before the enforced stop on a residential street in Streatham, south London, because Mr Kaba realised he was being followed, Mr Gibbs said.
On what Mr Kaba did next, Mr Gibbs added: ‘He got the car working, he’s smashing it up to get away. Why?
Police footage shows the pursuit of the Audi driven by Chris Kaba. Officers tried to stop the car on September 5, 2022, as it had been linked to a shooting the previous evening
Still from a video showing the initial follow of the Audi vehicle driven by Chris Kaba. A police driver feared his colleague was going to be run over just before Chris Kaba was shot by a Met marksman, the court heard
Computer generated image issued by the Crown Prosecution Service of a reconstruction shown to the court at the Old Bailey of the position of two firearms officers in front of the Audi in which Chris Kaba was fatally shot
The blue Audi Q8, the vehicle Chris Kaba was in when he died. Chris Kaba was killed when Metropolitan Police firearms officer Martyn Blake shot him once in the head through the vehicle’s windscreen in Kirstall Gardens, Streatham
‘They [the officers] cannot do nothing and so they have to persevere on the order they have been given as a team, trusting each other to be in the right place, trusting their training and instincts.
‘The relevance for the officers in assessing risk is that they knew that the driver had an increased opportunity to arm himself if there was a gun in the car.
‘The shotgun from the last night was outstanding, as were the suspects – and even the victim had not been identified.’
Mr Gibbs said that rather than comply with officers’ orders, Mr Kaba decided to ‘trash’ the Audi and would probably have been able to ‘screech and grind and wheel-spin his way out’.
At the conclusion of the closing speeches, Mr Justice Goss adjourned the trial until Monday when he is expected to send the jury out to deliberate on a verdict.