The Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan has found that a 29-year-old man who was knocked down and killed by a PSNI Land Rover in west Belfast two years ago was the victim of a "tragic accident".
Jim McMenamin, from Glenalina Road, was knocked down by the vehicle near the junction of the Springfield Road and Avoca Close in the early hours of Saturday June 4th, 2005, as police responded to an emergency call. He died at the scene.
Mrs O'Loan also concluded, despite some witness statements to the contrary, that the Land Rover's warning siren was sounding at the time of the accident.
The ombudsman reported that of the people who offered witness statements, only one person actually saw the collision. The witness said he had been driving along the Springfield Road when he saw the police vehicle with blue lights flashing pass him on the other side of the road.
"When he looked in his rear-view mirror he saw a young man standing at the junction, then saw him run across the road before being hit," said Mrs O'Loan.
Other witnesses said they saw the speeding Land Rover pass them and while it had its blue lights on, it had no siren.
Mrs O'Loan said her investigators listened to the police radio transmissions which they seized shortly after the incident. "The sirens can be clearly heard when an officer in the Land Rover responded to the call on his radio and almost one minute later after the collision when he requested for an ambulance," she added.
"We have checked and established that there was no other emergency vehicle in the area at the time. From that fact, and the volume of the noise of the siren, we have concluded that the vehicle did in fact have its siren on," she said.
"I am aware that many of the witnesses we talked to were quite clear that they did not hear a siren. I am also very conscious that the issue of whether or not the siren was on became a major issue in the media: maybe the subsequent coverage affected people's recollection of events," added Mrs O'Loan.
She said that nothing in her investigation suggested "it was anything other than a tragic accident". Mrs O'Loan sympathised with the McMenamin family.
She added that the driver of the vehicle "was clearly affected by what happened and visibly upset when we talked to him.
"Despite this he co-operated fully with my investigators and spoke freely and openly about what happened."
