Police contact with man before he killed a boy and injured other children – Essex Police, December 2019

Essex Police received a high volume of calls from a man who appeared to be suffering with mental health issues from 2016 onwards. The man reported harassment by his neighbours and made threats to harm members of the public if the police did not take any action.

The number of calls he made to police continued to increase into 2019 and several attempts were made over the years for him to have a mental health assessment, however he declined on each occasion. There were attempts to ascertain whether his harassment claims were factual.

On 2 December 2019, the man drove his car into a group of school children, injuring several of them and causing one fatality.

When the man was arrested, he still refused an assessment under the Mental Health Act. Mental health professionals judged that he had capacity and that there were therefore no grounds to detain him.

Our investigators obtained all Intelligence Source Register reports from Essex Police and the calls from 2019. We also took statements from officers who came into contact with the man.

Our investigation concluded in December 2020. We waited for all associated proceedings to be finalised before publishing our findings.

During our investigation, there was no indication any police officer had behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings or had committed a criminal offence.

We concluded Essex Police operated within the policies and procedures in place and considered options that were available to them in attempting to deal with the man.

An inquest into the death of the boy was held on 30 June 2022. The jury reached a narrative conclusion that actions of Essex police fell short of what they would deem adequate. The mental health assessment on 30 Sept 2019 was deemed as inadequate and led to a failure to detain the man under the Mental Health Act. They consider these matters caused or contributed to the death of the boy.

We carefully considered whether there were any organisational learning opportunities arising from the investigation. We make learning recommendations to improve policing and public confidence in the police complaints system and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents. In this case, Essex Police had already begun to review their relevant existing policies and develop new strategies at the time of our investigation. Our investigation has not identified any additional learning.