A police officer has been described in court as being “unhinged” as he drove into the back of an electric motorcycle causing one of the riders to suffer a broken leg.
Pc Tim Bradshaw is on trial at Portsmouth Crown Court charged with causing serious injury by dangerous driving during the incident which happened in Hawthorn Road, Bognor Regis, West Sussex, on November 3 2022.
Mason McGarry, who was 17 at the time, told the court that he had been riding an electric bike in the seaside town with friend, Dominic Mizzi, riding pillion.
He said that earlier in the evening they had ridden on the pavement past a police car and he had made a gesture towards it of sticking his middle finger up.
Mr McGarry, now aged 19, said that about 10 minutes later he turned into Hawthorn Road while riding about 15 to 20mph when the incident involving a police vehicle being driven by Bradshaw happened.
He said: “I cross the traffic lights and saw a car to my left, I didn’t know what kind of car it was, carried on Hawthorn Road, heard a revving engine and Dom shouting ‘Police, police’.
“I had a thump from behind and I hit the floor, I must have blacked out for one or two seconds, saw what was going on and managed to get up and hobble away.”
The court heard that Mr McGarry suffered a fractured tibia bone in his left leg which required surgery.
Mr McGarry admitted that he was driving the e-bike without a licence, which he had never held, and had previously been banned from driving.
He said that he had more than 40 previous convictions including robbery, theft, burglary, taking a vehicle without consent, dangerous driving, driving without insurance, driving without a licence, assaulting an emergency worker, escaping legal custody and breaching court orders.
Mr McGarry also admitted that he was convicted of dangerous driving on November 11 2023, after “stealing a car and failing to stop for police”.
He was also convicted of driving without due care and attention for the night of the incident involving Bradshaw.
Mr McGarry said that he had had interactions with Bradshaw since he was 12-years-old and had been arrested by him “a few times”.
He also claimed that Bradshaw had come to his house when he was 12 to inform him “that three men were after him” before the officer added that “his colleagues are going to be clapping their hands”.
He added that when he was aged 15, his mother told him that Bradshaw “could not come to his house again”.
Giving evidence, Mr Mizzi said that prior to the crash “I saw Bradshaw grinning and smiling towards me”.
He said that Bradshaw was “unhinged, definitely unhinged” and was “just smiling and laughing, saying that I had been in an accident previous to this”.
Mr Mizzi, 22, said that the crashed had shifted a metal rod in his femur from a previous accident.
He said: “I was asking for an ambulance to be called but no-one was, it took for another unit to come, they put me in the back of a police car to take me to hospital.”
He added: “There’s a difference between protecting and serving our community and being unhinged.”
Mr Mizzi admitted that he had previous convictions including for theft, public disorder, assaulting emergency workers, drug offences and weapons.
He told the court that he had suffered a broken hip and femur in the earlier accident which had also involved an e-bike in nearby Collyer Avenue.
The court also heard that a friend of the pair had died in another accident in Hawthorn Road in October that year.
The jury was shown video footage of the incident which showed the electric motorcycle turning into the path of the police car a few seconds before the vehicle collides with the e-bike.
Bradshaw, 55, of Bersted, West Sussex, denies the charge and the trial continues.