Legal News
Public inquiry to reconvene on police shooting of Azelle Rodney after seven years (3 September 2012)
Date: 03/09/2012
A public inquiry is to be reconvened later into the death of a west London man who was shot by a police officer in 2005.
Azelle Rodney, 24, from Hounslow, was shot dead by a marksman who opened fire when Rodney was in the back of a car in Edgware, north London.
The policeman claimed that he thought Mr Rodney was reaching for a gun.
The inquiry, the first into a fatal police shooting, was launched because an inquest coroner could not see the intelligence information which made the police to believe that Mr Rodney was armed.
The oral hearings are going to begin later at a court in the Principal Registry of the Family Division in central London.
Chairman Sir Christopher Holland, a retired High Court judge, would preside over to decide how, when, where and in what circumstances Mr Rodney died and then he shall make his recommendations.
Two men were arrested at the scene in the same car as Mr Rodney in 2006 and were jailed for drugs and firearms offences. At their trial the court heard three guns were found in the car.
A report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the firearms officers involved in Mr Rodney's shooting.
The coroner ruled in 2007, that as a matter of law neither he nor the jury had seen relevant intelligence material, which could make an inquest possible.
In 2010, Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced that an inquiry would be established.
Mr Rodney's mother, Susan Alexander, said that having waited for so long to hear the evidence about the death of her son has had a profound effect on her life for the past seven years.
She doubted that she would ever recover from it.
Earlier this year, the government apologised to the European Court of Human Rights for the delays in the case.
Ms Alexander said she wanted to see "a robust, effective and transparent inquiry" into how and why her son died.
The inquiry is expected to last up to 10 weeks.
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