No Jail Sentence for Damilola Killer After High Speed Chiswick Chase

Ricky Preddie jumped over river wall to evade police

Ricky Preddie. Picture: Met Police

August 6, 2024

One of the killers of Damilola Taylor has avoided an extended stay in prison despite being involved in a high speed chase through Chiswick when banned from driving.

On Saturday 2 March this year, 37-year-old Ricky Preddie was clocked doing speeds of over 50mph on his cousin’s Yamaha moped along Chiswick High Road which has a 20mph speed limit.

He was observed by police who had already had reports of the bike speeding. When they attempted to flag him down, he continued to head west towards Chiswick Roundabout and then Kew Bridge Road.

He later told police he was attempting to get to West Middlesex Hospital because he believed complications had developed to an earlier medical procedure.

The route took him through crowds of fans attending the Brentford fixture against Chelsea at the GTech Stadium and he jumped more than one red light.

When he reached Kew Bridge Road, he encountered the police ahead of him at a temporary road closure due to extension works on Cycleway 9 and was forced to turn back.

It is understood he then went in the direction of Strand on the Green before discarding the moped and jumping 20 feet off a river wall onto the Thames foreshore where he was apprehended by police at around 2.50pm.

At a trial last month at Isleworth Crown Court, body-worn camera footage from one of the officers in pursuit was played on which he could be heard shouting to his colleagues, 'Guys, he's in the river, he's in the river.'

The footage also shows that he was wearing a catheter. In his defence he said that he had started bleeding from the catheter and panicked believing he needed to get to the hospital as quickly as possible.

Preddie had been banned from driving in 2019 and given a one-year prison sentence suspended for two years after running down a police officer when she was attempting to stop his car. He reversed an Alfa Romeo onto her in Wembley and lost his licence until 2033.

The prosecution said this was the latest incident in a 'prolonged, persistent and deliberate course of dangerous driving' which had led to 60 previous convictions.

In 2006 he had been jailed for eight years along with his brother Daniel for the random killing of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor who they stabbed with a broken beer bottle. Reports presented to the court said that he was genuinely remorseful for the crime, which he committed when he was 13 and he now had a five-year-old son. He had been released from prison in 2011 after serving five years for manslaughter. He had been remanded in custody for 151 days since the incident in Chiswick.

He admitted driving a motor vehicle dangerously, driving while disqualified and using a motor vehicle without third-party insurance. He was sentenced to an additional eight weeks’ prison suspended prison sentence and another year was added to his driving ban. He was also required to complete 30 days of rehabilitation activity and do 240 hours of unpaid work in the community.