A man accused of murdering two young men when he drove his black pickup truck the wrong way down a motorway slip road and ploughed into the back of an e-bike has been found guilty.
Alex Rose drove into William Birchard and Darren George as the pair rode home from the pub on one electric bike, in the early hours of July 22, last year, jurors at Guildford Crown Court were told. They were hit on the M3/A316 slip road in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey.
Prosecutors said Mr Birchard, 21, and Mr George, 22, had been on their way home from the King’s Fairway Pub in Ashford, Surrey, when they had “the very great misfortune of encountering” Rose and two of his friends. Rose had called the pair to help him hunt for people he suspected were trying to break into his home.
It was alleged Rose, 30, crashed his pickup truck into the rear of the e-bike, knocking Mr Birchard and Mr George off the bike, before making a three-point turn on the motorway and driving back up the slip road, past the pair lying on the tarmac.
Jurors heard Rose, a landscape gardener, had been at his home in a private road in Sunbury when he saw “movement in the darkness at the rear of his house” at around 11.40pm last July 21 and believed someone was trying to burgle him. Prosecutor Deanna Heer KC told jurors Rose made phone calls to his friends Charles Pardoe and Samuel Aspden, both 25, and they joined him in a search for the supposed burglars.
Rose and Aspden drove around local streets in their respective vehicles with Pardoe accompanying the latter as a passenger.
Pardoe and Aspden were also on trial accused of murdering Mr Birchard, from Colnbrook, and Mr George, from Egham. Ms Heer told jurors: “Although they (Pardoe and Aspden) were not driving the black Ford Raptor, the prosecution case is they acted together with Alex Rose, assisting and encouraging him to commit the offences of murder that night.”
Prosecutors called the collision “violent retaliation”, and said Pardoe and Aspden intended to cause Mr Birchard and Mr George harm as they “helped Rose hunt them down”. Jurors heard neither Mr Birchard nor Mr George was “anywhere near” when Rose first suspected he had seen burglars and had actually been on their way to the pub at that time.
At 12.49am, Mr Birchard and Mr George were captured on CCTV and appeared to be “in no hurry”. But by 12.50am, CCTV cameras on captured them travelling “at speed” pursued by Rose and Pardoe in the black vehicle, and Aspden in the white pickup truck, jurors heard. “They were pursuing the e-bike at speeds in excess of 60mph,” Ms Heer told jurors.
It was then that Mr Birchard and Mr George drove the e-bike the wrong way round the roundabout and the wrong way down the motorway slip road, prosecutors said, trying to get away from Rose and Aspden’s vehicles. The court heard Rose followed the bike down the slip road in his pickup truck before driving his vehicle into the back of the e-bike.
“The prosecution case is that he did so quite deliberately,” Ms Heer said. “Having done so, he performed a three-point turn on the dual carriageway, then drove back up the slip road, past the collision site, making no effort to stop to help William Birchard and Darren George who were, by then, lying in the road.”
By that time, Mr Birchard was already dead, having suffered fatal head injuries, fractures to his face and skull and a severe brain injury, the court heard. Mr George was still alive but had sustained “catastrophic head injuries”, jurors were told.
He was taken to hospital after he and Mr Birchard were discovered in the road by a lorry driver, but died the next day. Neither man had been wearing a helmet. Jurors heard Rose parked his black Ford Raptor in a street near his home address.
Ms Heer told jurors that footage recorded next door to Rose’s house by his father Stewart’s doorbell camera contains audio which picks up a voice saying “What the f**k have you done?”
Throughout the time that Rose, Pardoe and Aspden allegedly pursued the e-bike, Rose had been on the phone to his girlfriend Tara Knaggs, 25, who was at Rose’s home in Manor Gardens, the court heard. Knaggs is on trial accused of assisting Rose by allegedly booking a hotel and flights for him to leave the UK “with intent to impede” his apprehension.
“She was, the prosecution say, instrumental in trying to help him escape,” Ms Heer told jurors.
The court heard Rose and Knaggs, of Great Ayton, North Yorkshire, were arrested at Birmingham Airport on the afternoon of July 22 2024. Aspden and Pardoe were arrested two days later.
Today, the jury found Rose and Pardoe guilty of two counts of murder by a majority verdict at Guildford Crown Court on Wednesday following their trial. Knaggs was unanimously found guilty by the same jury of assisting an offender.
A fourth defendant, 25-year-old Samuel Aspden – who was another of Rose’s friends who had driven around the area in his own car the same evening, was found not guilty of both murder charges, the CPS said.
Mary Walford, senior crown prosecutor at CPS South East, said: “Two men lost their lives as a result of Alex Rose wrongly believing that they were going to break into his property. This was a tragic case of the two victims simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Despite the defendants claiming that what happened that night was an accident, it was clear from the evidence that it was not.
“Rose used his car as a weapon and drove it deliberately at the e-bike in the mistaken belief that they had tried to steal from him, after systemically searching for them for an hour, before pursuing them at high speed.
“Pardoe did nothing to stop him committing murder and actively encouraged Rose in his search until its tragic conclusion.”