Taxi Driver Online

DAILY MAIL (London)

March 31, 2008 Monday

POLICE CHASE HORROR

A WOMAN was killed and a man and a two-year- old girl were fighting for life yesterday after a car being chased by police ploughed into them.

Police in an unmarked car were pursuing two men in a black Mercedes 4x4 after they saw it being driven erratically.

It raced off after officers switched on their blue lights to stop it.

Witnesses said both the Mercedes and the police car jumped a red light before the 4x4 careered into at least six vehicles, including the Vauxhall Corsa carrying the woman and her companions.

Paramedics tried to save the woman, who was in her thirties, but she was pronounced dead at 4.30am, 45 minutes after the smash in Bethnal Green, East London.

The man was last night in intensive care with life-threatening head injuries at the Royal London Hospital, where the girl was also being treated.

Two men believed to have been in the Mercedes ran off after ramming it into the side of another car but were later arrested.

A 45-year-old woman from one of the other cars is in a stable condition in Homerton Hospital with serious leg injuries while a 47-year- old man needed treatment to his back.

The owner of a nearby taxi firm said one of his cabbies chased the driver of the Mercedes on foot.

He said: 'The driver of the Mercedes jumped out and ran away from the scene. One of my drivers struggled with him but he broke free and ran away. The man was over 6ft and he couldn't keep hold of him.

'It was chaos. Police didn't know whether to chase the man or tend to the injured. They chose to help the other passengers first because people were so badly injured.

'We heard the huge noises one after another as the cars piled up.

'One of our taxis was the last to crash and it was a write-off, so you can imagine the impact on the cars at the front. The Corsa had two passengers and they had to be cut out of the wreckage.

'There was a child in the back. They were carried out on stretchers.

'Everyone was shouting and screaming. Cars were on both sides of the road.

'One of the passengers in a cab got out and started arguing with someone from the Mercedes. They were about to start fighting.'

Local resident Michelle Roberts, 52, was woken by the noise.

'There was a loud bang and then another and another, like a series of explosions. I thought a bomb had gone off,' said Miss Roberts, a personal assistant.

'The next thing was this awful screaming. It was a woman and a man screaming in desperation.'

Scotland Yard's Department of Professional Standards has started an investigation, which is routine when police cars are involved in accidents.

The Home Office, said 126 people were killed in accidents involving police vehicles in England and Wales between 2000 and 2004.

The latest tragedy comes almost a decade after Channel 4 newsreader Sheena McDonald was hit by a speeding police van, travelling on the wrong side of the road in Islington, North London, responding to a 999 call.

The accident prompted a review of standards of police driving.

Miss McDonald spent 72 hours in a coma after suffering massive head injuries. She sued the Metropolitan Police after the officer at the wheel was cleared of careless driving.
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