9-19-2008 United Kingdom:A DRIVING instructor who was a former sex offender with a grudge against the police turned his van into a fireball after vowing to kill as many officers as possible.
Terence Langrell, 42, burned to death after strapping three propane gas canisters and two water butts of petrol behind the driver’s seat of his Ford Transit van on August 1 last year.
An inquest yesterday heard it was the eighth anniversary of his 1999 caution for attempting to procure an act of gross indecency with a 14-year-old in Flint, North Wales.
Fire investigators said he laced the seat and himself with accelerant before setting himself on fire, probably with a disposable lighter, near Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral.
A fragment of a note in the van read: “You lot abuse your powers and do what you want, you are wrong, I will make you pay for the last six years.
“I will kill as many police as I can.”
Five police officers were injured by the massive explosion when they approached the vehicle in Park Place, Toxteth, after a slow chase.
Police believe Langrell deliberately “baited” them into pursuing him so he could murder as many as possible.
Mr Langrell, a BSM driving instructor, lived with his parents in Boyd Close, Leasowe, and had shares and savings worth more than £40,000 in various accounts.
He was reported missing on March 27 last year, but was spotted travelling in the Shetland and Orkney Islands.
The inquest heard Langrell, a registered sex offender until December 2004, had developed a hatred of police.
Shortly before 10pm on August 1, officers followed Mr Langrell after seeing him driving suspiciously outside Smithdown Lane police station.
Other officers joined the pursuit through Granby Street, Warwick Street and Ullet Road, until Mr Langrell’s van mounted the kerb in Park Place.
Witness Paula Wright described seeing the driver covered in “blue flames”.
When PC Andrew Astle opened the door of Mr Langrell’s van, he unwittingly fed oxygen into the fire, which had not fully ignited because of the fuel vapour-rich atmosphere inside.
Officers scrambled for coats to pat down colleagues who staggered from the scene in flames while the blast blew one PC against her own vehicle.
One described Mr Langrell as a “human fireball”.
PC Helen Prentice heard him shouting: “F*** off, I’ve killed her, I’m dead, I’m dead,” and “I don’t f****** care anymore, she’s dead.”
She said she tried to help him but said he would not lie down and continued to move towards the officers.
Detective Superintendent David Kelly told the inquest: “I believe he intended to deliberately kill police officers.
“I would describe him as baiting the officers until sufficient numbers had joined the pursuit and the result of his actions are there to see on the CCTV footage.
“My opinion is he was luring more and more cars into the pursuit, and that is why we launched an investigation into the attempted murder of five police officers.”
Detective Inspector Karen Byrne, of the force’s professional standards department, said: “Every officer at the scene acted in a selfless manner and there can be no criti-cism levelled at them in any way shape or form.”
The inquest heard Langrell was a loner and “paranoid”, believing Merseyside’s police helicopter was following him.
In 2003, he went to Arrowe Park hospital and asked for a psychiatrist, saying “life was not worth living”. A psychiatrist concluded he could be suffering paranoid schizophrenia.
The jury at yesterday’s inquest found Mr Langrell had killed himself.
No evidence about the identity of the woman he spoke of was ever found, and Liverpool coroner Andre Rebello said this may have been a fantasy.
..News Source.. by Liverpool Daily Post
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