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The family of Chris Kaba have said they have been left with the “deep pain of injustice” after the police marksman who shot him was cleared of murder.

Martyn Blake, 40, fired a single bullet through the windscreen of the Audi Q8 the 24-year-old was driving as armed officers surrounded the car in Streatham, south London, while he tried to escape.

The jury deliberated for about three hours on Monday to clear Mr Blake, who appeared to be briefly overcome with emotion as the verdict was returned.

Mr Kaba’s family sat in silence in court, but in a later statement said the not guilty verdict had left them with “the deep pain of injustice”.

“No family should endure the unimaginable grief we have faced. Chris was stolen from us, and this decision shows his life – and many others like him – does not matter to the system. Our son deserved better,” the statement issued by the campaign group Inquest said.

Met Police marksman on trial for Chris Kaba
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Chris Kaba was shot dead in Streatham, south London

“The acquittal of Martyn Blake isn’t just a failure for our family, but for all those affected by police violence.”

The family vowed that they “won’t be silenced” and will continue fighting for “justice and for real change”.

The verdict was called a “devastating moment” for the “family, our community and the nation”, by the Justice For Chris Kaba Campaign.

‘Huge sacrifice’

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said Mr Blake made a split-second decision on what he thought was necessary “to protect his colleagues and to protect London”.

“No firearms officer sets out on duty intent with ending a life,” Sir Mark said, speaking outside New Scotland Yard after the verdict. “Their sole purpose is the complete opposite, the protection and preservation of life.”

The Killing Of Chris Kaba
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Blake shot through the windscreen of an Audi Q8

He said Mr Blake has paid a “huge personal and professional sacrifice” over the past two years since the shooting and that he worries about the lack of support officers receive.

“No police officer is above the law, but we have been clear that the system holding police to account is broken,” Sir Mark said.

“I worry about the lack of support officers face for doing their best, but most of all, I worry for the public. The more we crush the spirit of good officers, the less they can fight crime that risks London becoming less safe.”

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper added it was a “very difficult case” causing “deep concerns for communities, for police officers and of course causing real distress for the families most closely affected”.

She said it is imperative the jury’s decision is “respected and everyone is given the space to process the verdict”.

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Chris Kaba verdict: Met reaction

Conservative leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick called Mr Blake a “hero” adding that his prosecution was “wrong”.

“The ordeal he [Mr Blake] has gone through, unthinkable. We must back our brave police officers, and not drag them through the courts for making split-second decisions,” Mr Jenrick said.

‘I think there is police behind me’

A helicopter and six police cars were involved in stopping Mr Kaba on the night of 5 September 2022 after the vehicle he was driving had been linked to a shooting outside a school in nearby Brixton the previous evening, the Old Bailey heard.

Mr Kaba knew he was being followed, telling a friend Elisha Fizul: “Lish, one sec, I think there is police behind me,” before he turned into Kirkstall Gardens, where Mr Blake was inside a marked BMW.

The trial hinged on the following 17 seconds, which saw the Audi reverse a short distance, hitting an unmarked car behind, then accelerate forward, reaching an estimated 12mph before colliding with the BMW and a parked Tesla.

Read more:
Ex-police marksman calls for ‘better understanding’ of officers who use lethal force

Armed officers were heard shouting “go, go, go” and “armed police, get out of the f***ing car,” as they surrounded the vehicle, in footage played in court.

The Audi then reversed at 8mph, hitting the unmarked Volvo behind, and was stationary as Mr Blake pulled the trigger of his carbine less than a second later, followed by shouts of “shots fired” and “where from?”

Mr Kaba, who was not armed and had no weapons in the car, had both hands on the steering wheel when he was shot in the head and he died in hospital in the early hours of the next day.

Prosecutors said Mr Blake may have “become angry, frustrated and annoyed” and Mr Kaba had done nothing in the seconds before he was shot to justify his decision to pull the trigger.

Helen Lumuanganu (left), the mother of Chris Kaba, arriving at the Old Bailey.
Pic: PA
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Mr Kaba’s mother Helen Lumuanganu (left), outside the Old Bailey. Pic: PA

They said the Metropolitan Police officer gave a “false” and “exaggerated” account when he said Mr Kaba used his car as a weapon in a bid “to escape at any cost”.

Mr Blake, who was previously known as NX121 before a judge lifted an anonymity order, told jurors he was “full of dread” as he heard wheel-spinning and the car’s engine revving.

He said he didn’t intend to kill Mr Kaba, adding: “I had a genuine belief that there was an imminent threat to life, I thought one or more of my colleagues was about to die.

“I thought I was the only person with effective firearms cover at the time.

“If I hadn’t acted, I thought one of my colleagues would be dead. I felt I had a duty to protect them at the time.”

Chris Kaba's father and mother, Prosper Kaba and Helen Lumuanganu
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Chris Kaba’s father and mother

Chris Kaba was shot dead on 5 September
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Chris Kaba was shot dead on 5 September

One armed officer said he would have opened fire if Mr Blake had not, while another said he was fractions of a second away from doing so.

Mr Kaba’s shooting sparked a wave of protests, while his family have campaigned for justice.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) handed a file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in March last year, following an almost seven-month investigation.

It will review the case before deciding if Mr Blake should face gross misconduct proceedings.

In a statement on Monday, IOPC director Amanda Rowe defended the decision to refer the shooting to the CPS.

She said the decision to refer the case followed “careful consideration of a significant amount of evidence” gathered during its independent investigation.

“The matter has now been heard in open court and the officer has accounted for his actions before a jury,” Ms Rowe said.

“Ultimately it is that jury’s decision, having carefully considered all the evidence, to determine guilt or innocence and we respect that decision and thank them for their consideration.”

Some Met firearms officers turned in their weapons after Mr Blake was charged in September last year, while the force’s commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, called for greater legal protections after a review was ordered by then home secretary Suella Braverman.

Mr Blake is only the fourth police officer to be charged with murder or manslaughter over a fatal police shooting in England and Wales since 1990, while a total of 83 people have died in such incidents, according to the Inquest charity.

In that time only one on duty officer, Benjamin Monk, has been found guilty of manslaughter – over the death of former Aston Villa striker Dalian Atkinson, 48 – while none have been convicted of murder.

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School kids asking for advice on strangulation during sex – as abuse victim issues warning

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School kids asking for advice on strangulation during sex - as abuse victim issues warning

Schoolchildren are asking teachers how to strangle a partner during sex safely, a charity says, while official figures show an alarming rise in the crime related to domestic abuse cases.

Warning: This article contains references to strangulation, domestic abuse and distressing images.

It comes as a woman whose former partner almost strangled her to death in a rage has advised anyone in an abusive relationship to seek help and leave.

Bernie Ryan, chief executive of the Institute for Addressing Strangulation, has been running the charity since its inception in 2022 after non-fatal strangulation became a standalone offence.

“It’s the ultimate form of control,” she says.

She says perpetrators and victims are getting younger, while the reason is unclear, but strangulation has seeped into popular culture and social media.

“We hear lots of sex education providers, teachers saying that they’re hearing it in schools.

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“We know teachers have been asked, ‘how do I teach somebody to strangle safely?’

“Our message is there is no safe way to strangle – the anatomy is the anatomy. Reduction in oxygen to the brain or blood flow will result in the same medical consequences, regardless of context.”

Bernie Ryan, the Chief Executive of the Institute for Addressing Strangulation
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Bernie Ryan, CEO of the Institute for Addressing Strangulation

A recent review by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin recommended banning “degrading, violent and misogynistic content” online.

Violent pornography showing women being choked during sex she found was “rife on mainstream platforms”.

Ms Ryan says she “wants to make sure that young people don’t have access to activities that demonstrate that this is normal behaviour”.

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Man whose body was found in suitcase ‘had raped teenager’

Strangulation is a violent act that is often committed in abusive relationships.

It is the second most common method used by men to kill women, the first is stabbing.

According to statistics shared by the Crown Prosecution Service, in 2024 there was an almost 50% rise in incidents of non-fatal strangulation and suffocation – compared to the year before.

Kerry pleads for other victims of abuse to leave before it's too late
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Kerry Allan pleads for other victims of abuse to leave before it’s too late

Domestic abuse victim Kerry Allan has a message for anyone who is in an abusive relationship.

Kerry met Michael Cosgrove in September 2022. While she said “at the beginning it was really good”, within months he became physically abusive.

In August last year her friends found his profile on a dating app.

“I confronted him and he denied it. I knew we were going to get into a big argument and I couldn’t face it, so I said I was going to my mum’s for a few days and take myself away from the situation.

“I came back a few days later and stupidly I agreed we could try again and everything escalated from that.”

Injuries to Kerry's chest. Pic: CPS
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Injuries to Kerry’s chest. Pic: CPS

In the early hours of 25 August the pair had come in from a night out at a concert and got into an argument.

“He was having a go at me, accusing me of flirting with other people, and I was angry. I told him he had a nerve after what he’d done to me in the week and how he humiliated me.

“I told him that I wanted to leave, that we were done and that I wanted to go to my mum’s and that’s when it got bad.

“He pinned me to the bed and that’s when he first strangled me.”

Kerry's neck injury. Pic: CPS
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Kerry’s neck injury. Pic: CPS

Kerry says this was the first time she’d ever been violently assaulted. Cosgrove was eerily silent as he eventually let go and Kerry gasped for air.

“I remember trying to get my breath back, I was crying and hyperventilating… I was sick on the bedroom floor and I was asking him to go.”

Cosgrove strangled her for a second time before letting go again.

“He was saying I wasn’t getting out of this bedroom alive. I was dead tonight, he hoped that I knew that. Just kept saying how I’d ruined his life.”

Injury to Kerry's eye. Pic: CPS
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Injury to Kerry’s eye. Pic: CPS

“I remember feeling a sort of shock thinking at this point, I’m not going to get out of this bedroom, he’s actually going to kill me.”

Kerry began screaming and shouting for help as loud as she could.

Her neighbours heard the commotion and called the police. While they were en route, Kerry was once again being assaulted.

Bleeding in Kerry's eye
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Bleeding in Kerry’s eye

“I ran over to the bedroom window and tried to jump out, he grabbed me as I went to open the window, and we struggled. And then I was back in the same position, he was on top of me on the bed, and his hands were round the throat again. But this time it didn’t stop.

“I remember trying to struggle and trying to kick out and hit him and I just kept thinking that I definitely was going to die, because at this point, it wasn’t stopping.”

The next memory Kerry has is opening her eyes to see police and paramedics in the bedroom.

Michael Cosgrove. Pic: CPS
Image:
Michael Cosgrove. Pic: CPS

Cosgrove had heard the sirens, jumped out of the bedroom window and went to hide in Kerry’s car.

Kerry remembers opening her eyes to paramedics caring for her: “I remember thinking, I’m alive. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that I was alive and I wasn’t dead. My last memory is him being on top of me with his hands on my throat.”

Kerry met Michael Cosgrove in September 2022
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Kerry met Michael Cosgrove in September 2022

She gives this advice to anyone who is in an abusive relationship: “Please speak to somebody, whether it’s friends, family, a work colleague, whether it’s somebody online, whether it’s a charity that you’re directed to, any sort of abuse is not okay.

“Whether it starts off emotional, they often start off that way, and they escalate, and they can escalate badly.

“Take what happened to me as a huge warning sign, because I wouldn’t want anyone else to be in the position I’ve been in the last eight months.”

Cosgrove was found guilty of attempting to murder Kerry and intentional strangulation.

He will be sentenced in July.

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King Charles echoes his grandfather’s historic VE Day speech as he marks 80th anniversary

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King Charles echoes his grandfather's historic VE Day speech as he marks 80th anniversary

The King echoed the words of his grandfather as he delivered a speech at the precise moment King George VI addressed the nation to mark VE Day 80 years ago.

At 9pm, Charles spoke at Horse Guards Parade in central London and called on the country to “rededicate ourselves” to “the cause of freedom” and “the prevention of conflict”.

His grandfather spoke to the nation from Buckingham Palace at 9pm on 8 May 1945, to thank the country for their contribution as war came to an end in Europe.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla wave Union flags during the concert celebrating the 80th Anniversary of VE Day, held at the historic Horse Guards Parade in central London. Picture date: Thursday May 8, 2025.  Jonathan Brady/PA Wire
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King Charles III and Queen Camilla wave Union flags during the concert celebrating the 80th Anniversary of VE Day, held at the historic Horse Guards Parade in central London. Picture date: Thursday May 8, 2025.

Recalling the VE Day speeches, Charles said: “We should remind ourselves of the words of our great wartime leader, Sir Winston Churchill, who said ‘meeting jaw to jaw is better than war’.

“In so doing, we should also rededicate ourselves not only to the cause of freedom but to renewing global commitments to restoring a just peace where there is war, to diplomacy, and to the prevention of conflict.

“For as my grandfather put it, ‘We shall have failed, and the blood of our dearest will have flowed in vain, if the victory which they died to win does not lead to a lasting peace, founded on justice and established in good will’.

Stressing the responsibility we still hold today, he added: “Just as those exceptional men and women fulfilled their duty to each other, to humankind, and to God, bound by an unshakeable commitment to nation and service, in turn it falls to us to protect and continue their precious legacy – so that one day hence generations yet unborn may say of us: ‘they too bequeathed a better world’.”

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King Charles III and Queen Camilla alongside the Waleses at the concert celebrating the 80th Anniversary of VE Day, held at the historic Horse Guards Parade in central London. Pic: PA
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King Charles III and Queen Camilla alongside the Waleses at the concert celebrating the 80th Anniversary of VE Day, held at the historic Horse Guards Parade in central London. Picture date: Thursday May 8, 2025. Pic: PA

The King’s words were designed to be a reminder of current conflicts.

In recent months, the monarch has been placed at the forefront of diplomatic matters, making his call for “unity” even more pertinent.

“The Allied victory being celebrated then, as now, was a result of unity between nations, races, religions and ideologies, fighting back against an existential threat to humanity,” the King said. “Their collective endeavour remains a powerful reminder of what can be achieved when countries stand together in the face of tyranny.”

After a week which has seen the Royal Family make it a priority to ensure VE Day commemorations have been special for the surviving veterans, the King thanked not just those who served in uniform but acknowledged the contribution of those left back home.

“We unite to celebrate and remember with an unwavering and heartfelt gratitude, the service and sacrifice of the wartime generation who made that hard-fought victory possible,” he said. “While our greatest debt is owed to all those who paid the ultimate price, we should never forget how the war changed the lives of virtually everyone.”

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King arrives at VE Day service

Like families up and down the country remembering VE Day, it was clear Charles’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was at the forefront of his mind.

Remembering his mother’s story of what happened when she was allowed to leave the palace, he said: “The celebration that evening was marked by my own late mother who, just 19 years old, described in her diary how she mingled anonymously in the crowds across central London and ‘walked for miles’ among them.

“The rejoicing continued into the next day, when she wrote ‘Out in the crowd again. Embankment, Piccadilly. Rained, so fewer people. Conga-ed into House. Sang till 2am. Bed at 3am!’.

Read more:
VE Day anniversary in pictures
What VE Day was really like

Charles continued: “I do hope your celebrations tonight are almost as joyful, although I rather doubt I shall have the energy to sing until 2am, let alone lead you all in a giant conga from here back to Buckingham Palace.”

Earlier in the week, at a tea party held at Buckingham Palace, the King said to one veteran: “Do you do the conga? I remember doing congas with my grandmother round and round the house.”

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Red Wall MPs should focus on two-child benefit cap rather than winter fuel, Harriet Harman says

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Red Wall MPs should focus on two-child benefit cap rather than winter fuel, Harriet Harman says

Red Wall MPs should push for the two-child benefit cap to be lifted rather than a reversal of the winter fuel payment policy, Baroness Harriet Harman has said.

Baroness Harman, the former Labour Party chair, told Sky’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast that this would hand the group a “progressive win” rather than simply “protesting and annoying Sir Keir Starmer” over winter fuel.

Earlier this week, a number of MPs in the Red Wall – Labour’s traditional heartlands in the north of England – reposted a statement on social media in which they said the leadership’s response to the local elections had “fallen on deaf ears”.

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They singled out the cut to the winter fuel allowance as an issue that was raised on the doorstep and urged the government to rethink the policy, arguing doing so “isn’t weak, it takes us to a position of strength”.

Labour’s decision to means test the policy has snatched the benefit away from millions of pensioners.

But Baroness Harman said a better target for the group could be an overhaul of George Osborne’s two-child benefit cap.

More on Harriet Harman

The cap, announced in 2015 as part of Lord David Cameron’s austerity measures, means while parents can claim child tax credit or Universal Credit payments for their first and second child, they can’t make claims for any further children they have.

Labour faced pressure to remove the cap in the early months of government, with ministers suggesting in February that they were considering relaxing the limit.

Baroness Harman told Beth Rigby that this could be a sensible pressure point for Red Wall MPs to target.

She said: “It could be that they have a kind of progressive win, and it might not be a bad thing to do in the context of an overall strategy on child poverty.

“Let’s see whether instead of just protesting and annoying Sir Keir Starmer, they can build a bridge to a new progressive set of policies.”

Jo White, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw and a member of the Red Wall group, suggested that her party’s “connection” to a core group of voters “died” with the decision to means test the winter fuel payment for pensioners.

“We need to reset the government,” she told Electoral Dysfunction. “The biggest way to do that is by tackling issues such as winter fuel payments.

“I think we should raise the thresholds so that people perhaps who are paying a higher level of tax are the only people who are exempt from getting it.”

Pic: AP
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Pic: AP

A group of MPs in the Red Wall, thought to number about 40, met on Tuesday night following the fallout of local election results in England, which saw Labour lose the Runcorn by-election and control of Doncaster Council to Reform UK.

Following the results, Sir Keir said “we must deliver that change even more quickly – we must go even further”.

Some Labour MPs believe it amounted to ignoring voters’ concerns.

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One of the MPs who was present at the meeting told Sky News there was “lots of anger at the government’s response to the results”.

“People acknowledged the winter fuel allowance was the main issue for us on the doorstep,” they said.

“There is a lack of vision from this government.”

Another added: “Everyone was furious.”

Downing Street has ruled out a U-turn on means testing the winter fuel payment, following newspaper reports earlier this week that one might be on the cards.

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