A rookie cop with only basic police driving permissions was doing ‘nothing less than what the public would expect’ when he decided to break the speed limit and run red lights to answer a 999 call which ended in a crash that left a teenager seriously brain damaged, a hearing has been told.
PC Boris McDohl, 34, was a ‘diligent and decent’ police officer who volunteered to respond to reports of a violent man with a knife running amok in a house when he could have ignored the call, the officer’s barrister told a disciplinary hearing. The Stockport-based ‘response officer’ then performed CPR on the 15-year-old who was left in a ‘permanent vegetative state’.
PC McDohl admits he defied his ‘basic’ police driving qualification which stipulated he abide by the laws of the road like any other civilian road user. The rookie officer, who joined the force a year before and who had only completed his ‘basic’ police driver training five weeks earlier, was captured topping 58mph in a 30mph-limit zone in a residential area of Stockport on a dark and rainy Boxing Day evening in 2020, his disciplinary hearing was told when it opened on Monday.
The police car he was following to the incident, driven by PC Sarah De Meulemeester, crashed into Khia Whitehead, then 15, causing catastrophic injuries which left him in a ‘permanent vegetative state’.
PC McDohl says he was ‘justified’ in breaching the rules to keep up with another colleague so the fellow officer did not have to confront a ‘violent’ cocaine-fuelled man with a knife on his own.
De Meulemeester, of Mill Court, Chinley, Derbyshire, was found guilty of causing serious injury by dangerous driving following a trial in 2023, and was jailed for 30 months. The 26-year-old, who also had only ‘basic’ GMP driving permissions and was not allowed to go above the speed limit, was over twice the 30mph limit when she hit then-15-year-old Khia.
PC McDohl a former airport fuel systems engineer, was in the patrol car immediately behind PC De Meulemeester and was at the end of a 14 or 15-hour shift when the incident happened on a wet and rainy Boxing Day evening in 2020.
Khia Whitehead suffered life-changing injuries after being hit by the police car driven by Sarah De Meulemeester
(Image: PA/family handout)
Based on the Stockport division of GMP as a ‘response officer’, PC McDohl was working on a force-wide initiative to tackle licenced premises breaking Covid restrictions when the incident happened..
He and a second officer on the same initiative, PC Michael Blakey, had been dispatched to Marple to help escort a ‘violent’ prisoner back to Cheadle Heath police station. Afterwards, the pair were sitting in their respective patrol cars when each became aware of reports of a ‘domestic disturbance’ in Adswood via their radios, the disciplinary hearing was told.
With a ‘skeleton staff’ on duty, a single officer, PC De Meulemeester, was dispatched to the scene but PC McDohl said he and his colleague agreed in conversation it was ‘not appropriate’ for her to respond alone and to provide her with ‘back up’ and also head to Adswood.
During the second day of the disciplinary hearing held at GMP’s headquarter in Newton Heath on Tuesday, Barney Branston, representing Greater Manchester Police, told the disciplinary panel the officer made a ‘deliberate decision’ to go over the speed limit, contravene red lights and turn on his ‘blues and twos’ emergency equipment on the way to the incident.
Khia Whitehead in hospital after the accident
(Image: PA/family handout)
“He accepts, fairly, that he knowingly overstepped boundaries or what he knew his limits to be as a basic driver,” said Mr Branston.
The barrister said the officer’s driving was ‘entirely inappropriate’ for the weather conditions in a residential area at that time of night and that he was ‘extremely lucky’ not to injure himself or anyone else. The officer took no account of the ‘entirely foreseeable’ risk of injury and had driven in an ‘entirely cavalier’ manner.
Then the officer ‘omitted key details’ such as his speeding and activation of emergency equipment in his initial account of the crash which he signed and gave investigators, said Mr Branston.
The statement was supposed to contain ‘basic details’ of the incident but the officer had been responsible for ‘deliberate omission’, he said.
The barrister went on that while PC McDohl had noted in his statement he saw PC Blakey turn on his emergency lights he had not then added ‘as did I’.
Mr Branston went on: “This was the moment the officer had to by acting honestly to record the known facts. He chose not to do so. He has chosen to hide the truth. Why? Logically to minimise culpability.”
Philip Barnes, representing PC McDohl, told the hearing his client had volunteered to respond to the 999 call which police radio messages revealed concerned a man armed with a knife who had been drinking and taking cocaine and who had threatened to torch the property and who it was suspected had already assaulted someone inside the home.
The barrister said ‘screaming’ could be heard in the 999 call and for the officers en route ‘violence could be expected’ when they arrived.
PC McDohl decided to respond even though he could have ‘legitimately ignored’ it, said Mr Barnes, adding that nobody was suggesting his client should be ‘commended’ because his actions that night were ‘quite frankly nothing less than what the public would expect’ of police officers.
Sarah De Meulemeester
(Image: Lynda Roughley)
“That he answered that call is we submit a measure of the man,” he said, adding that his client had made a ‘conscious decision’ to drive towards an incident whose seriousness ‘escalated’ during the journey.
The barrister also noted a report by the Independent Office for Police Conduct had made ‘little or no criticism’ of PC Blakey and that his client had driven in ‘exactly the same’ manner.
Mr Barnes said what happened to Khia Whitehead was ‘rightfully at the forefront of our minds’ because of the ‘awful injuries’ he suffered, but he questioned what the public would have thought had the officer driven to the incident at 30mph.
“He did what he reasonably and honestly thought it was necessary to do,” said Mr Barnes.
The barrister went on that the incident had been ‘traumatic’ for the officer and that this had affected his memory. But his client’s initial statement had not contained any untruth, he said.
Mr Barnes pointed out that at the time PC McDohl was still a ‘probationer’ and had had no experience of police procedures following serious incidents. The officer pressed a button in his car which ensured its ‘black box’ captured data from the journey which investigators later use, he said.
Garners Lane in Stockport after Khia Whitehead was hit by a police car
(Image: ASP)
The officer had removed a line added to a draft version of his account by a representative of the Police Federation – the police union which represents rank-and-file cops – which had said he was driving art ‘normal road speed’, said Mr Barnes.
His client was a ‘diligent and decent’ police officer who had been doing ‘no more than what was necessary’, said Mr Barnes.
The chairman of the disciplinary panel, Paul Forster, who has described the incident as ‘properly and truly tragic’, is due to announce his conclusion on Wednesday. The officer faces the sack if found guilty of gross misconduct.