A teenager who died during a police chase when he jumped out of a moving car told his mum moments earlier he was scared of going to prison, an inquest has heard.
Kelvin Bainbridge, 19, who was wanted for burglary, died after suffering serious head injuries when the pursuing police car hit him a second after he landed in the road in October 2019.
He had already racked up a string of convictions which saw him dubbed ‘one of County Durham’s most prolific burglars and car thieves’, the inquest heard.
Despite being banned from the roads since the age of 14, he was spotted driving his mother, his pregnant partner and two men in a Nissan Primera he had bought the day before.
They had just found out they were expecting a boy.
His mum Suzanne told the inquest that once police began pursuing them she urged her son to stop, telling him: ‘You will end up killing all of us in the car.’
Under cross-examination by John Beggs KC, for Durham Police, Mrs Bainbridge said he did not pull over, despite there being five people in the car.
‘This was the last words he said to me, “I’m going to go to jail for this”,’ she told jurors.
Mrs Bainbridge said her son felt the police driver, PC Paul Jackson, had a ‘vendetta’ against him and she recalled officers frequently visiting her home to arrest him in the months before his death.
The inquest heard her son was designated a ‘sector target’ by Durham Police, meaning he was a known criminal in the area, and a person of interest to them.
He was wanted for burglary offences, had previously been before the courts 16 times, was convicted of 45 offences and had already served six months in jail for grievous bodily harm.
In tense exchanges, Mr Beggs suggested that Mrs Bainbridge could have got him to hand himself in, or contacted the police herself.
The grieving mother wept in the witness box as Mr Beggs said: ‘Could you have telephoned the police to stop any of this miserable business?
‘That’s the tragedy, is it not? Had you done that, we wouldn’t be here, would we?’
Mr Beggs apologised for distressing Mrs Bainbridge but said a professional police officer had been accused of having a ‘vendetta’ – despite only arresting her son once, two years before the collision – and it was important that the jury understood the background.
The barrister asked if she thought her son was trying to escape on foot down an alleyway when he decamped from the moving car and she agreed with Mr Beggs he seemed ‘desperate’ to get away.
When Mr Beggs asked Mrs Bainbridge if she thought PC Jackson was ‘just doing his job’ that day, she said she did not want to answer.
Mr Beggs said the mother had transferred the feelings of guilt she felt onto the police officer, who was ‘trying to apprehend one of County Durham’s most prolific burglars and car thieves’.
Earlier, expert collision investigation Robin Turner told the inquest he had studied police in-car video footage as well as detailed technical data recordings of the vehicle’s movements, as the hearing focused on the final seconds before impact.
Mr Turner said Mr Bainbridge appeared to begin exiting the Nissan 1.2 seconds before the collision, and he was fully out around 0.92 seconds before.
The police driver, who was manoeuvring to the side of the Nissan, did apply the brakes before impact but the BMW’s front valance went over Mr Bainbridge, who had stumbled.
Mr Turner told the inquest: ‘He (the police driver) did not have enough time to react to stop this happening.’
The hearing was adjourned until Wednesday.
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