Two men guilty of murdering e-bike riders

Two men have been found guilty of the murder of two e-bike riders, after they were driven into deliberately after a pursuit by a pick-up truck on a motorway slip road in Surrey. 

Alex Rose, 30, was driving the Ford Raptor which hit them and he was convicted, along with Charles Pardoe, 25, who was a passenger in the vehicle. Under the principle of joint enterprise, anyone who assists or encourages someone else to commit a crime can also be found guilty of that crime. 

Rose had seen movement in playing fields that backed on to his home in Sunbury and thought someone was trying to break into his house, so he called his friends and started to look for the culprits. 

They had been searching the area for an hour, on the phone to each other, before they spotted William Birchard and Darren George who had gone out to meet a friend at a pub, on their e-bike and wrongly assumed they were responsible. They chased them through Sunbury at speeds of over 60mph in 30mph areas, before crashing into them. William died at the scene and Darren died of his injuries later that day. 

Following the crash, Rose left his car in a street, before returning home on foot. He later called police to claim his car had been stolen from his home. 

He then left the house with his girlfriend Tara Knaggs, 24. Whilst on their journey to Birmingham Airport, she attempted to book flights to Thailand unsuccessfully on her phone, before securing one-way flights for the pair of them to Istanbul from Birmingham Airport, but they were arrested by police in the departure lounge. They were found with £4,000 cash on them and had no luggage for the trip. Knaggs told her mother this was a surprise trip for her birthday arranged by Rose.  

Mary Walford, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Two men lost their lives as a result of Alex Rose wrongly believing that they were going to break into his property. This was a tragic case of the two victims simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

“Despite the defendants claiming that what happened that night was an accident, it was clear from the evidence that it was not. Rose used his car as a weapon and drove it deliberately at the e-bike in the mistaken belief that they had tried to steal from him, after systemically searching for them for an hour, before pursuing them at high speed. 

“Pardoe did nothing to stop him committing murder and actively encouraged Rose in his search until its tragic conclusion.”

Building the case: 

To prove an offence of murder the prosecution has to call evidence so that a jury can be sure that the defendant either intended to kill or cause really serious injury to the victim. 

Where the prosecution case is one of joint enterprise the evidence must be such that a jury can be sure that the defendants foresaw that the primary offender might kill or cause grievous bodily harm to the victim and continued to participate in the enterprise.