Witness describes seeing police pursuit of teenage boys before Cardiff crash

A witness has described seeing a police van following two teenagers on an electric bike minutes before they were killed in a collision.

The resident said she was walking to her local shops on Monday evening when she saw two boys riding a bike along Stanway Road in Ely, Cardiff, followed “seconds later” by the van.

She claimed she saw the van on the other side of the road as it passed her.

“They were on the other side of the road, and they took it wide,” the woman, who only wished to be called Leanne, said.

“It was faster than they normally go round here. If you’re coming round that corner – no lights and no sirens – how do I know you’re there?

“What happens if I had been crossing the road at that exact point?

“Minutes later I heard about a crash, but I didn’t put two and two together. What were the police chasing them for?”

Harvey Evans, 15, died alongside his best friend Kyrees Sullivan, 16, when the Sur-Ron bike they were riding crashed on Snowden Road.

Bollards

The woman said she did not see which direction they went in after passing her but believed they carried on up Stanway Road to go through the bollards at the top of the street knowing the police could not follow and then entered the nearby Snowden Road.

South Wales Police have confirmed the van turned off Stanway Road into Howell Road and then went on to Grand Avenue, which is the route to take to loop around the estate and bypass the bollards.

“The police can’t get up that way, so when the police are saying they had a van on Grand Avenue they had no choice but to go that way,” Leanne said.

“It’s a bit too much of a coincidence. They got there within a minute of the crash and already had a van on Grand Avenue. That’s the way they would have had to go.

“The boys could have got through the barriers with their bike, they couldn’t.”