Trigger Warning: Mentions murder and violence

The Jury has come to a verdict, following a two-week-long trial, regarding the murder of Chris Kaba. Martyn B;ake, 40, pled not guilty despite being charged on 20th September 2023 for fatally shooting Chris Kaba, through a windshield in Streatham, South London. 

Kaba was struck with a bullet travelling 800 metres a second, fired metres away into the vehicle on 5th September 2022.

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Kaba was struck with a bullet travelling 800 metres a second

Following the verdict, Kaba’s family said ‘This decision shows how his life, and many others like him, does not matter to the system’ and emphasised their ‘deep pain of injustice’. 

When questioned by Prosecutor Tom Little KC, Blake had told the Old Bailey he was aiming at the central body mass of Mr Kaba and intended only to stop the car.

The officer told the Jury he ‘disagreed’ with the prosecution’s assertion that he did not assess the risk before firing the bullet. 

The Audi, which was stopped on Kirkstall Gardens, was boxed in by police before revving and ramming police cars in an attempt to escape. Blake said his colleagues were within ‘touching distance’ of the vehicle and that Kaba had driven at him.

Prosecutor Little showed the jurors video footage of the incident, and during cross-examination told the defendant: ‘The vehicle actually drives away from you rather than towards you’.

Blake asserted that ‘The whole purpose of firing the bullet was to protect my colleagues’, Little disputed this, and suggested Blake deliberately aimed for Kaba’s head.

An unnamed colleague, ‘HA10’, who spoke in defence of Blake during the trial, told the jury she ‘absolutely thought’ one of her colleagues ‘had been possibly hit by the vehicle’. HA10 was in a convoy of armed police vehicles that had followed the Audi to Kirkstall Gardens. 

She told jurors she gave ‘hands-on’ first aid to Mr Kaba, who died later that night succumbing to a gunshot to the head.

Blake was seen to have taken a deep breath as the jury’s decision was read out but seemed unfazed by the decision. He will be immediately reinstated by the Metropolitan Police.

A former colleague of Blake told the BBC that ‘At no point was there any evidence that Martyn Blake had done anything wrong or at least deviated from his training, or indeed the law’. This is despite the Crown Prosecution Service defending its decision to bring Blake to trial.

It has now been reported that Chris Kaba was in one of ‘London’s most dangerous gangs’, and was linked to two shooting incidents occurring days before his death. Reporting restrictions meant his criminal record and gang history were not revealed during the trial as a senior judge ruled this had no bearing on the issues relating to the jurors’ decision.

Deborah Coles, Director of the Inquest has said, ‘It is difficult to reconcile the verdict with the evidence heard at the trial and the shocking reality of an unarmed Black man being shot in the head’.

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It is difficult to reconcile the verdict with the evidence heard at the trial and the shocking reality of an unarmed Black man being shot in the head’

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