Police contact and pursuit investigated after road collision leads to child head injuries – Greater Manchester Police, June 2025

Two officers in a police vehicle noticed a car with a smashed window, damaged wing mirror, and a rear passenger without a seatbelt on. The police car pulled alongside the car, which contained the driver and four other passengers. The passengers were all children.

The officers activated their blue lights and directed the car to pull over, which it initially did. One of the officers got out of the police car to speak with the driver, but the car drove away at speed, undertaking other vehicles on the road.

The officer got back into the police car and activated the emergency siren, alongside the continuing blue lights. One of the officers made a radio transmission call to the force control room to seek authorisation to pursue. 

Approximately seven seconds later, dashcam footage showed the pursued car in the distance trying to overtake another car. It collided with this car, lifting upwards and into the opposite lane where it collided with a second car. The police car stopped at the collision approximately eight seconds later.

The dashcam footage showed the police car reached a top speed of approximately 73mph for a few seconds, and 66mph when the collision happened. The pursued car was travelling some distance in front of the police car.

One of the officers got out of the police car and ran after the driver of the pursued car who had already left the vehicle and was running away. The other officer got out of the car and checked on the drivers of the cars that had been hit by the pursued car.

Officers put two of the children from the pursued car into the back of the police car. The other two children remained in the back of the car, where one child was resting in the lap of the other with significant and visible head injuries.

One of the officers radioed for an ambulance stating that the child was not conscious or breathing. They requested an air ambulance.

The other officer returned to the scene having not caught the driver. The officers removed the injured child from the car and gave medical assistance until the paramedics and air ambulance team arrived and took over medical care. The child was taken to hospital with significant head injuries.

We received a death or serious injury referral from the force and decided to independently investigate the actions and decisions of officers before the road traffic collision.

We examined the decision to request the car to pull over and to initiate the pursuit, the decisions and actions of the officers throughout the pursuit (including any risk assessments that were made), the medical assistance provided by officers to the injured child, and whether the officers’ decisions and actions were in line with legislation, and national and local policies, procedures and guidelines.

We also considered the nature and extent of police contact with the child before they were seriously injured and whether the police may have caused or contributed to this.

Our investigators attended the scene and post incident procedures. We examined dashcam footage from the police vehicle and officer body worn video footage. We also reviewed CCTV footage that captured the local area.

We took statements from the officers involved in the pursuit and from witnesses. We reviewed the training records for each officer, the vehicle collision report, and analysed the incident data recorder which was downloaded from the police vehicle. Our investigators also reviewed radio transmission calls and incident logs. The pursued car underwent a mechanical examination in the presence of one of our investigators to assess whether it had any defects that affected the actions or capabilities of the driver to drive the vehicle at the time of the incident.

We concluded there was no indication that a person serving with the police committed a criminal offence or behaved in a manner to justify disciplinary proceedings.

We found that the decision to request the car to stop was in accordance with the Road Traffic Act. Officers made risk assessments in line with their training – considering that the weather and road conditions were dry, visibility was good, traffic was heavy with slow moving vehicles on both sides of the road, and pedestrian activity was light. These risk assessments were an accurate reflection of the situation when compared with the dashcam footage and the risk assessments recorded in the officers’ accounts.

We found that the manner and speed in which the police car was driven was in line with relevant legislation and force and national guidance and was appropriate in the circumstances. We also found that officers managed the child’s medical needs in line with their training, prioritising the child’s head wound appropriately.

We carefully considered whether there were any learning opportunities arising from the investigation. We make learning recommendations to improve policing and public confidence in the police complaints system and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents.

We did not identify any organisational learning in this case that was not already being addressed by the force.

We found that the audio did not function consistently on the police dashcam footage. This issue had been raised as a learning recommendation to the force in 2024, and Greater Manchester Police were in the process of implementing arrangements in response. 

We also found that key police witness accounts were not provided on formal documents with the required statutory declaration. This issue was also identified in another un-related investigation, and it was agreed that the learning in this case would be referenced as part of the other investigation.