A MET marksman who shot dead rapper Chris Kaba has been found not guilty of his murder.
Met firearms officer Martyn Blake, 40, was unanimously acquitted of murder by an Old Bailey today.
Rapper Chris Kaba was shot dead through his windscreen[/caption]
Body-worn footage from Martyn Blake moments before the shooting[/caption]
Body-worn footage from another cop showing Kaba at the wheel before the shooting[/caption]
Dashcam footage showing armed cops surrounding the vehicle[/caption]
A recreation of the scene of the shooting in South London[/caption]
Sgt Blake shot the 24-year-old gangster in the head as he tried to ram his Audi car at cops in September 2022.
The prosecution suggested Blake may have been “angry, frustrated and annoyed” because Kaba refused to comply with police.
But Blake told jurors he fired as he feared a colleague would be killed by the vehicle during the hard stop in Streatham, South London.
Last night the Independent Office for Police Conduct(IOPC) and CPS were accused of mounting a political prosecution with flimsy evidence to soothe community tensions.
Former Met firearms officer Tony Long, himself cleared in 2015 of murder over the shooting of a London gangster, said: “If Kaba had been a terrorist or a white criminal this case would never have been brought.
“Kaba was seen as the British George Floyd and the case was championed as a cause célèbre by the likes of Sadiq Khan.
“Under that pressure, the CPS and IOPC acted like Pontius Pilate.
“They washed their hands of the case and left the responsibility of dealing with it to the man and woman on the Clapham omnibus.”
The court earlier heard how Kaba died of a single gunshot wound shortly after midnight on September 6, 2022.
Ex-Met marksman Tony Long said the CPS and IOPC acted under pressure[/caption]
Helen Lumuanganu and Prosper Kaba, parents of Chris Kaba, at the Old Bailey[/caption]
