London police officer who fatally shot a Black motorist is acquitted of murder

LONDON (AP) — A London police officer who fatally shot a Black motorist two years ago was acquitted Monday of murder in a case that intensified mistrust of Britain's largest police force among many in the city’s Black communities.

Metropolitan Police marksman Martyn Blake, 40, was cleared by a London jury in the death of Chris Kaba, who was unarmed but was driving a vehicle that had been involved in a shooting a day earlier.

Kaba, 24, was shot in the head after the vehicle was boxed in by two police cars on a narrow residential street in the Streatham Hill neighborhood on Sept. 5, 2022.

Blake fired a single round through the windshield of the Audi because he thought fellow officers’ lives were in danger when Kaba began ramming the police cars in an attempt to break free.