A police officer was killed in “truly shocking circumstances” when he was dragged for more than a mile by a car on a country road, a court heard.
PC Andrew Harper was “swung from side to side like a pendulum” after his ankles got caught in a strap trailing behind a vehicle driven by 19-year-old Henry Long in Berkshire in August 2019.
The Old Bailey heard his uniform was “ripped and stripped from his body”.
Mr Long and passengers Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole, both 18, deny murder.
Mr Laidlaw QC has described PC Harper’s injuries to the court, he said: “He had sustained utterly catastrophic injuries.
“Both PC Kemp and other officers who rushed to the scene did all they could to save PC Harper. He was breathing but his breathing was laboured, consistent with what is known as agonal breathing (an abnormal, reflexive pattern of breathing), which the pathologist will tell you about.
“It became quickly clear that his injuries were simply not consistent with life and at 11.45pm, a paramedic who arrived at the scene, declared PC Harper’s life extinct.”
The moment was described when PC Kemp a police dog handler first found PC Harper: “It was PC Kemp, one of the two dog handlers, who was the first to attend to the figure who had come loose from the strapping in Ufton Lane. It was then that he recognised that figure to be his colleague PC Harper. PC Harper was completely naked at that point, save for his boots and socks.”
A driver that passed the car dragging PC Harper, Mr Whittingham, described what he told police. Mr Laidlaw tells the jury: “As the SEAT car reached the junction of Lambdens Hill and the A4, Mr Whittenham was driving along the A4, approaching the junction. The SEAT left it late to brake at the junction and then pulled out in front of him, causing him to slam on his brakes.
“There was what Mr Whittenham described as a rope coming from the boot of the car and his first impression was that attached to it was the bloodied carcass of a deer.
“Then he realised that it was a human figure being dragged by the ankles. It was, as the witness described it like a “rag doll” and he saw PC Harper’s body strike the kerb on the other side of the junction as the car careered into Ufton Lane.”
The jury were also shown footage of the moment PC Harper and PC Shaw intercepted the trio in the moments before the former became entangled in the strapping.
The three defendants were later arrested at a traveller caravan site before a police investigation concluded that it was the three defendants involved in the theft and subsequent death of PC Harper that night.
Long, of Mortimer near Reading, Cole, of Aldermaston, and Bower, of Mortimer, all deny murder.
Proceedings will resume on Wednesday (June 23).
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