Police watchdog rules officers behaved 'appropriately' when they tailed 15-year-old boy killed in crash

Greater Manchester Police officers behaved 'appropriately' when they followed a 15-year-old boy on an electric motorcycle prior to him fatally colliding with an ambulance, the police watchdog has found. Saul Cookson was riding a Sur-Ron electric motorcycle in Salford at around 2pm on June 8, 2023 when two GMP officers began tailing him in a marked police car.

Just 24 seconds after they began to follow him, Saul drove through a set of bollards the police BMW X5 couldn't follow. After passing the bollards onto Langworthy Road, he collided with an ambulance and died of his injuries at Salford Royal Hospital.

Greater Manchester Police referred the case to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which is mandatory when someone dies following contact with police. Now, the IOPC has found that the officers involved, who were referred to as officers E7 and D5 in court for 'operational reasons', behaved 'appropriately'.

An inquest into Saul's death at Bolton Coroners' Court concluded the officers had not engaged in a pursuit of Saul 'according to police policies'. A jury concluded Saul had died from 'multiple traumatic injuries'.

The case was referred to the IPOC, which has now concluded its investigation. This found that the presence of the large marked police vehicle may have impacted how Saul was riding.

However, it did not find that there was any indication that any officer had behaved in a manner which would require disciplinary action to be taken and that no officer had committed a criminal offence. The contact time between the officers first seeing Saul to his colliding with the ambulance was 24 seconds.

According to the IOPC the first time that the driver of the ambulance would have been able to see Saul was 0.6