FOOTAGE of a policeman’s last seconds before he was mown down on a roadblock
emerged today as a teenage burglar was found guilty of manslaughter.
Clayton Williams, 19, drove a stolen Mitsubishi pickup truck at PC Dave
Phillips, 34, as he fled from cops after a raid in Merseyside.
The thug, who had been out of jail for only three weeks after another car
chase, led police on an 80mph pursuit after taking the vehicle from a
burglary in Birkenhead last October.
Video of the pursuit shows PC Phillips bending down to lay a “stinger”
trap to puncture the tyres on the Wallasey Dock Link Road.
Williams steered round the device and struck PC Williams at 50mph before
speeding away.
The officer was catapaulted into the air and died from “catastrophic”
injuries.
Afterwards cowardly Williams phoned a relative to say: “I’m going away.
I’ve killed a bizzie.”
Prosecutors said he gave the officer “no chance” and aimed at him
deliberately in a “cowardly and merciless act”.
Williams, who admitted in court he had smoked cannabis since the age of six,
denied deliberately hitting the officer claiming he did not see him.
Today a jury at Manchester crown court cleared him of murder but found him
guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
The judge said they could reach the verdict if they decided Williams did drive
at the officer and put him at risk but did not intend to kill or cause him
serious harm.
He was jailed for 20 years as a court heard of his “shed load” of
past convictions for 33 offences.
In May last year he crashed a stolen Vauxhall Astra, taken in a burglary, into
a lamppost while being chased by police in Wallasey, narrowly missing a
pedestrian.
He served half of his sentence of 32 weeks in a Young Offenders’ Institute and
was out on licence at the time he killed PC Phillips.
Mr Justice William Davis said as he passed sentence: “I’m prepared to
accept now, particularly after what we have heard, you must have some
understanding of the devastation you have caused, but on the other hand I
can entirely understand those whose statements have been read out that any
remorse at the time was false, because at the time this poor policeman died
you were covering your tracks. That’s not remorse.”
Williams tried to pin the blame on his co-defendant Philip Stuart, 30, who was
in the car with him, claiming the older man shouted at him and grabbed his
arm seconds before the fatal impact.
However Stuart told police Williams had told him: “Watch this” as he
tried to steer round the roadblock, it can now be reported.
PC Phillips’s widow Jen and other family members have attended each day of the
trail, now in its second week.
She wiped tears from her eyes as the verdict was delivered, but there was no
reaction from Williams in the dock.
The in an unusual move, Mrs Phillips addressed her husband’s killer directly
in court as she delivered a heart-rending victim impact statement from the
witness box.
The tearful mum-of-two said: “I have wrote this because of what you have
done to me and my children.”
She then delivered a highly charged address to the court, telling how she is
living in “hell”.
As she spoke, jurors wept and Williams himself, head bowed, began to wipe away
tears.
Mrs Phillips, who had to stop a number of times to compose herself, described
her husband as the “good guy” who “did not stand a chance –
he was just doing his job”.
She said: “I and the children are the ones living a life sentence. He not
only killed my husband, he’s killed something inside me too.
“If hell was real, I’m certainly living in it.”
The widow said she still has dreams that her husband is alive until she wakes
and looks at the empty side of their bed.
She said: “Even now I close my eyes and pray this is all a horrible
nightmare. I’m living my worst nightmare.”
On the night he died she held his hand “begging” him to live as
doctors fought for 40 minutes to resuscitate him – while Williams was at the
time covering his tracks.
Mrs Phillips said: “It is indescribable the loneliness and emptiness.
Whenever I needed someone to lean on he was there to catch me and support me.”
She described watching the last moments of her husband’s life played out on
video during the trial as “extremely horrific and harrowing”.
She added of Williams: “Who gave him the right to play God?”
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Jen also paid tribute to her husband with a photo montage of their life
together in a video posted online with a quote from James Blunt’s You’re
Beautiful: “My love is pure. My love is brilliant. I see an angel when
I see you.”
The four-minute video features images of the devoted dad with his wife and two
young daughters on family holidays, wedding snaps and photos of him in his
police uniform.
Williams, who admitted burglary and aggravated vehicle-taking, was cleared on
Friday of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm to PC Thomas Birkett, 23,
who dived out of the way of the speeding Mitsubishi.
Stuart, who was a passenger in the car with Williams, admitted burglary and
aggravated vehicle-taking and did not give evidence in the trial.
The career criminal, who has 32 previous convictions for 57 offences, lost an
arm in an accident and is known locally as One Arm Philly.
When his flat was searched, property from another burglary which took place on
the same night was also found.
He was jailed for six years.
Three others who burned Williams’ clothes and dumped the ashes in scrub besdie
the River Mersey, admitted conspiracy to assist an offender.
Georgia Clarke and Michael Smith, both 19, were at the home of Williams’ aunt,
Dawn Cooper, 34, where he fled after killing the constable.
Cooper and Smith were each jailed for two years and Clarke for 12 months.
After the case Helen Graves, senior crown prosecutor with Mersey-Cheshire
Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Williams drove a stolen vehicle at
dangerously high speeds through residential areas and then collided with a
police officer who was simply doing his duty.
“His actions on that night have devastated the family of PC Phillips and
robbed the police force of an upstanding and valuable member of the team.
This has been a complex and difficult case and the CPS would like to thank
Merseyside Police for their help in bringing this case to court.
“The family of PC Phillips have behaved with tremendous dignity and
courage throughout this trial, despite having to face the details of the
last moments of their beloved husband, father, son and brother. Our thoughts
remain with them at this very difficult time.”