Fatal crash following pursuit - Merseyside Police, October 2017

On 22 October 2017 Merseyside Police was called to a report a car being stolen from a home in The Wirral. Officers arrived in the area in a police vehicle with blue lights and sirens activated. They saw the stolen car travelling in the opposite direction. The police driver turned his vehicle around to follow the stolen car, which then drove away at speed. Within ten seconds of the police vehicle being behind the stolen car, officers informed the control room the car had crashed. Officers gave first aid to the two occupants of the vehicle. One later died from his injuries.

During our investigation we gathered evidence from the officers involved and the vehicle they were travelling in, including the dashcam footage. We obtained recordings of the radio transmissions and took statements from the training department of Merseyside Police. All officers were treated as witnesses throughout the investigation.

Radio transmissions showed that there was 26 seconds between officers reporting that they were behind the stolen car and then informing the control room that the car had crashed. There was no evidence that the police were aggressive in their pursuit. The independent evidence indicated that officers adhered to policy and that the police driver showed self-control in the way he was driving. Although the driver of the stolen car may have sped up because of police presence behind, there was no evidence to suggest that the police caused the death of one of the occupants of the car.

After reviewing our report, Merseyside Police agreed.

We completed our investigation in April 2018 but waited until we received confirmation that there would be no inquest into the death of the car’s occupant, in summer 2019, before publishing its outcomes.