Chris Kaba gunned down a rival six days before he was shot dead
The Met Police marksman who shot Chris Kaba has been cleared of murder after a jury accepted he was trying to save the lives of his fellow officers.
Kaba, 24, was trying to escape a police ‘hard stop’ by reversing his Audi 4×4 backwards and forwards when Martyn Blake, 40, opened fire in Streatham Hill, southwest London, on the evening of 5 September 2022.
Blake’s collegues told the jury they were terrified before he fired a single shot through the windscreen.
Kaba was hit in the head and died instantly.
The car had been blocked in by six police BMW X5 SUVs and Kaba drove forwards to get away but was not moving the car when he was hit, the Old Bailey heard.
Kaba’s Audi Q8 had been stopped after police recognised the number plate as being involved in a shooting by three hooded men outside a school in Brixton the night before.
The next day a Specialist Firearms Command daily briefing was circulated which included information on the Brixton incident.
Kaba was not identified but officers were warned about a ‘gang ride-out and new threats to life being issued,’ the Old Bailey heard.
Blake, known by the cypher NX121, was a passenger in one of the BMWs parked on Kirkstall Gardens in Streatham Hill when Kaba’s car came down the road pursued by other police vehicles.
He was armed with a semi automatic SIG Sauer MCX carbine which fires a bullet travelling at 800 metres a second.
Dashcam footage from Blake’s vehicle showed armed officers rush forward to surround the vehicle and point guns through the window.
Kaba then quickly drove the car forwards causing the officers to move back while he tried to drive between the two vehicles in front of him.
He rammed into the two vehicles causing the wheels of his own vehicle to spin.
Officers then ran forward and attempted to smash the windows of the Audi.
The Audi then reversed backwards, with another police vehicle behind it, and officers stepped back before the fatal shot was then fired.
Blake had apologised for the distress his actions caused Kaba’s family but insisted his actions were ‘lawful and appropriate in the circumstances’.
He told the court: ‘I had a genuine belief 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 one with firearms cover at the time.
‘I felt I had a duty to protect them at the time.
‘I shot just above the steering wheel, which I felt was the greatest chance of hitting the central body mass of the driver.’
He added: ‘I felt at that moment he was about to kill my colleagues and felt that was the only choice I had.
‘The whole purpose of firing the bullet was to protect my colleagues.’
Kaba was months away from becoming a father when he was shot.
Members of his family including his mother Helen Lumuanganu were in court today as the not guilty verdict was given by the jury of nine men and three women after some four hours of deliberation.
Colleagues of Blake all spoke of the ‘firearm threat’ posed by Kaba and one said he was about to pull the trigger himself.
A juror asked an officer, codenamed DS87, if he had been about to take a shot Kaba and ‘if not why not.’
DS87 replied: ‘The simple answer is yes.
‘At that moment as you may appreciate I’ve landed and arrived and as my feet settle and I bring my weapon up you see the vehicle already in motion.
‘At that point there is no doubt in my mind that the vehicle was going to come forward at any moment.
‘It was by the actions of officer Blake that the vehicle then stops and then I don’t need to take a shot.
‘It is clear the vehicle has reversed and the only reason the vehicle is reversing is to build momentum to come forward.’
Asked what risk he believed they were facing when they stopped the Audi, DS87 said: ‘Based on all the information I had an individual potentially armed with a firearm, a firearm which had been used in a public area to potentially injure others so potentially that suspect could still be armed with a firearm.
The officer claimed he was fearing for his life when Mr Kaba moved the vehicle backwards and forwards.
Dashcam footage shows another officer, known as P99, running towards the Audi, before turning back towards his motor because he was worried Kaba would escape.
In his statement after the operation, P99 wrote: ‘I thought, f–k he’s going to break out.’
Another Met Police firearms officer, known as NX137, was a navigator in the ‘Bravo’ BMW which pulled up behind Mr Kaba’s Audi.
Bodycam footage showed the officer running towards the Audi as it attempted to drive between two vehicles.
He squeezed himself behind the Audi but feared he could be crushed.
NX137 said: ‘I did feel in danger, unfortunately I had to put myself in that position, it was unknown if there was a firearm threat in the vehicle.
‘I was not actively thinking I could be crushed between the cars, although it felt as though it might be a possibility.
CHRIS KABA CONVICTIONS
Drill rapper Chris Kaba was a leader of the Brixton Hill based gang ’67’ and has a criminal record dating to when he was 13.
Kaba, 24, known as ‘Mad Itch’, was convicted of possessing an imitation firearm with intent to cause fear of violence after shots were fired in Canning Town on 30 December 2017.
He was jailed for four years at Snaresbrook Crown Court in 2019 but released on licence the following year.
In August 2020 he was sentenced to five months jail for possession of a knife and failing to stop.
Kaba was handed a 28-day domestic violence protection order in April 2022 relating to the mother of his unborn child.
The order barred him, from contacting her on social media or entering the street where she lives.
Kaba was a self styled ‘grime rapper’ who used his music to goad rival gang members and gloat about his crimes.
Six days before he was shot dead, Kaba chased a gang rival and shot him in the leg with a gun smuggled into the Oval Space club in Hackney.
The shooting was part of an ongoing gang war for control of a drug dealing network between Kaba’s ’67’ gang, based in the Brixton Hill area of London, and the ’17’ gang from Wandsworth Road area.
Kaba was driving an Audi Q8 through Streatham Hill on the evening of 5 September when the vehicle triggered the police’s ANPR system.
The car was a wanted vehicle after members of the public reported gunshots in Brixton the night before and saw a man with a shotgun.
Tom Little, KC, prosecuting, told jurors: ‘The reports also included details that three men, wearing dark hoodies, had changed their clothes and got into two vehicles and had driven away.’
A registration number given for one of the vehicles was YF19 NMM – the Audi Kaba was driving when he was stopped.
The car had also been stopped by armed police with another gang member at the wheel earlier in the year.
In legal submissions Mr Little told how Kaba had spent all his teenage years running with gangs and breaking the law.
In 2015, when he was 17, Kaba was convicted of affray and possession of an offensive weapon, namely a belt.
The offence involved a revolver style handgun found nearby but police could not prove a link to Kaba and he was not charged.
Blake’s defence barrister Patrick Gibbs, KC, made an application for Kaba’s history of offending to be part of Blake’s trial.
Mr Justice Goss ruled against him but details of the shooting on 4 September went before the jury.
Mr Gibbs said the Blake trial should hear details about Kaba ‘and his behaviour’ relating to the shootings in Hackney on 30 August and Brixton on 4 September.
‘What Mr Kaba actually was and what he had done in my submission is relevant and directly relevant to an assessment of that issue the parties have,’ he said.
‘The present state of reporting is all jurors know is that Mr Kaba was a “father to be” shot in his car by the police.
‘That phrase has been inescapable in media reporting.’
Mr Gibbs said a statement from a friend would give the impression that Kaba was ‘calm’ and listened to advice.
‘How would that person react to an armed police car? And how by contrast did Mr Kaba react?’ the barrister asked.
Mr Gibbs’ suggestion was that the police suspected Kaba was a highly dangerous gangster.
‘The footage cannot provide a full answer to that about what he was trying to do, crucially why, and how that was perceived by the officers,’ he said.
He said that if Kaba was alive ‘he would have been tried for attempted murder in this court over many weeks.’
Mr Gibbs was refering to the shooting of Brandon Malutshi at the Oval club involving fellow gang member Marcus Pottinger, Shemiah Bell and Connel Bamgboye.
‘Mr Bamgboye and two other members of the 67 gang which is Mr Kaba’s gang, were convicted on 29 February this year of possession with intent to cause fear of violence, possession of a firearm and Mr Bell and Mr Pottinger were also convicted of offences.
‘Mr Kaba had on that night travelled to Hackney in this Audi with Mr Bamgboye. Mr Kaba, having fired twice at his target inside the club then pursued him out into the street and then fired at him again with the handgun as he ran down the street.
‘He was driven away by another man, who actually was acquitted of assisting an offender in a Range Rover.
‘Mr Bell drove this Audi away and he parked it outside his home address and Mr Kaba came over soon afterwards at 4am in the morning.
‘The day before the Hackney shooting on 29 August he had been seen to get out of this Audi by a witness.
‘Mr Bamgboye’s passport was in the car on the night of the stop.
‘Mr Bamgboye was known to Mr Kaba. Apart from being core members of the 67 gang, which are a group of some notoriety in south London he was convicted with Mr Kaba in 2015 for his part in a nine man fight.
‘He was involved in the gang altercation in 2014 in which Mr Kaba was himself shot.
‘Mr Bamgboye was stopped in this Audi by armed police sometime in the first half of 2022 and knew the police believed the Audi had a firearms marker on it.
‘Mr Kaba knew what the police knew about him and Mr Bamgboye from an application that had been made for a gang order against Mr Kaba.’
Kaba was the subject to an interim gang order which ended on 29 April because he went to prison.
An application for a permanent order against him was to be made ten days after his death.
Mr Gibbs said: ’Mr Kaba had a balaclava in his pocket when he was shot, and he had gun shot residue on his sleeve when he was shot.
‘The Crown say is that there is no evidence Mr Kaba was one of gunmen on 4 September. In my submission there is strong evidence suggesting that he was.
‘Quite apart from his connection with the Audi on 30 August and on the night in question, there is cell site information on one of his telephones colocating with the Audi on the afternoon of 4th into 5th and blank data at just the time of the shooting.
Mr Gibbs said that on 14 September a discarded shotgun was found on the route to where Kaba was shot behind some bins by cleaners.
He had argued Mr Kaba’s history go before the jury as agreed facts.
Mr Justice Gibbs said: ‘I am satisfied that, for the reasons advanced by the prosecution, the evidence sought to be adduced of the events of 30th August 2022 and 4th September 2022 and subsidiary associated matters including his gang association do not have to do with the facts of the alleged offence, nor is any of it important explanatory evidence or have substantial probative value to a matter which is in issue in the proceedings and is of substantial importance in the context of the case as a whole.
‘The substance of the defence application is to place before the jury proved or alleged reprehensible conduct by Mr Kaba. Some of the evidence relating to the events for which leave is sought lacks a solid evidential basis and some of the conduct in relation to Mr Kaba’s previous convictions is of some age, when he was a teenager, and is almost entirely unrelated to firearms.
‘But, even taken at its highest, it does not fulfil the statutory test to be admissible. The identity of the driver of the Audi was not known at the time.’
