Speed Our Crime

This programme contains some strong language

and some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

We are the generation that film everything. Even our crimes.

Go on, boy!

HE LAUGHS

-What are you driving?

-A double-decker!

On phones and on CCTV,

they are uploaded and shared online.

This film explores the world of car crime

and the reckless decisions made by young men addicted to speed.

Some record their crimes and then post online.

People recognise me for it.

Why they think that we wouldn't be able to access Facebook accounts, I've no idea.

When road crashes are now the single biggest killer of young people

in the UK, how do they affect the lives of those left behind?

-I thought it was some sick joke.

-Stop, stop, stop.

-Get out, get out, get out.

-I can't!

-Just get out.

-I can't get out.

I can't get out.

LAUGHTER

20-year-old Sam Hobson is no stranger to uploading

footage of himself.

I film myself on these little electric forklift truck things,

driving round, reversing, picking up boxes and driving out.

Just messing around.

We had nothing to do at work, and it was like on a break.

I uploaded it on YouTube ages ago,

but you can't really find it on there, it's hard to find.

One night Sam took the idea of filming himself to a whole new level.

I was with my ex-girlfriend and one of her mates and we were just

having a casual drink at mine - the homebrew, I made myself.

It was probably about 9%,

so it was quite strong, I put extra sugar in it

and I don't know how many I had that night - a few.

We had run out of alcohol and that's when we just, like,

decided let's go out and do something.

Like, see who's about, see if there's anything to do downtown.

So we went out and just, there was just no-one about at all,

it was just dead that night.

We were just wandering around and it was quite cold outside,

so we thought, let's go and sit in the back of the bus and decide what do.

We pulled the handle and it came straight open.

Then I seen a key and then started driving.

-What are we driving?

-A double-decker!

I'd never driven one before, but it was an automatic,

basically stop and go.

Forward and reverse, power steering - it was quite easy to drive.

-Take this roundabout the wrong way round. Go that side.

-Right.

-Go down that side.

-Oh, my God, you guys.

Drove it up past the police station, up towards the Porton area,

turned it round there, let one of the girls have a go on it

and she came round the corner, smashed it into a tree.

Kind of smashed the window!

-What are we driving?

-A double-decker!

-How do you feel?

-I feel good, man.

-What are you driving?

A double-decker.

SHE WHOOPS You crazy bitch.

I enjoyed it, it was like an adrenaline rush really at the time.

That's what came through. I just like fast sports cars and driving.

-'How funny will this be in the newspaper?

-I know.

-'I picture myself in a hoody...

-Hopefully not.'

Why do you think you filmed yourself on your phone?

I just think it was a memory to look back, so I just started recording.

It was, like, it's not every day someone nicks a bus.

I can drive cars and lorries... No, no! Don't do that!

-You will roll the bus over!

-Oh!

Keep going straight ahead - we'll dump it in the middle of the roundabout.

-No. I'll park it somewhere.

-Outside my mum's house.

Whilst I was coming round, I was saying,

"Where shall we park it?"

-I thought it would be funny to park it round my mum's house.

-Why?

So when she wakes up in the morning, she'll see a bus there.

I don't know, I thought it was quite funny at the time.

Just not thinking properly, but thinking stupid things like that.

But I did think it would be a funny idea.

-Right, stop - slow down, slow down. Really wide, really wide.

-Slower.

Steering, steering. SHE SCREAMS

She wasn't doing too bad, and then near the end of the journey...

Slow down.

-Don't crash into any cars, please.

-All right, I promise.

Oh my God, though.

CRUNCHING Oh, shit!

Park it down here, and get the fuck out, now. Stop, stop, stop!

SHE SCREAMS Get out, get out.

-I can't.

-Just get out!

-I can't get out!

Oh, dear God!

SIRENS WAIL

But the excitement of joyriding can lead to more serious forms

of criminality - especially in urban centres like Manchester...

..where car crime rates are some of the highest in the country.

It's sort of, 13, 14,

seems to be a time when they are easily influenced

and if you make the wrong decisions there,

it can affect the rest of your life.

RAPS: Saying that I'm shit

But I'm never going to stop till I'm number one hit in the charts

I want to go far Have a nice life

Have a nice car and you don't need crime to make a lot of cash...

Greater Manchester Police are involved in Safe Gorton,

a youth project that takes in the Ryderbrow Road.

Its purpose is to make it a safer place by steering kids like Liam away from car crime.

The crime rate round here is high - burglaries, robberies,

car theft - everything.

My house has been burgled twice. I didn't like it.

That's why I think I won't do it - I'll never do that.

It was reports of...er...

-vehicle and a bike.

-There is a BMW 325...

Because of the high levels of vehicle crime,

the police had Ryderbrow Road under constant surveillance.

There it is.

There's quite a little crowd on Ryderbrow Road,

just near the junction of Goredale Avenue.

There is a motorcycle with them, which may very well be the one.

There's also a car parked at that junction

which is looking unusually warm.

Lad on the motorcycle has obviously noticed our presence -

he's just dumped it and run off into an address.

What makes a car so important to kids around here?

Speed, the looks.

Like, if you had a car, you could go anywhere. Pull the chicks.

Not getting about in the cold streets and that.

Wouldn't mind an Audi RE or an Aston Martin.

-Is that your dream car?

-Yeah.

One of my mates is 17 - he's getting a Mini

when he's 18 for his first car.

I can fully understand why cars are desirable to people,

because they are to me.

I can understand that if you don't think you can ever have one,

but you want one, um...

And you're from a particular sort of background where criminality

is not unusual, then the likelihood is that you could easily

go into that sort of crime.

It's very much the young males who grow up dreaming of being

able to drive fast, high-performance cars -

it's just the bravado that goes with it.

They like to be seen in them, they like to be seen with the keys

to a high-performance vehicle and people talk to them about it.

One set of teenage boys in particular

turned their love of fast cars into an inner-city crime wave.

This bridge was a bit of a landmark, you see.

This is the start of Ryderbrow, the other side is Dean Road.

I came across them really

when they all started tagging on a lot of the walls and the bridge

and suchlike. "RBS" and we knew it wasn't the Royal Bank Of Scotland!

That was Ryder Brow Soldiers.

People were telling us that they were in their houses

and they didn't want to go out, just because they would have to

encounter this group who were particularly problematic.

But it wasn't just the police filming this gang - believing they

were above the law, the Ryder Brow Soldiers started filming themselves.

Oh, yeah - that's where they smash into the lamppost

to get the camera down, with the stolen cars. Yes.

It's just anarchy, isn't it?

Those cars are probably somebody's pride and joy.

They probably worked hard to get those vehicles and to insure them

and get them legal and they are just racing them round, trashing them.

But you can see their mates are all there to watch.

That's what you're up against. Outrageous showing off.

We put the cameras in place to monitor their activity,

but when you see stuff like that,

you realise that they are taking the mickey.

The type of characters that are involved and the type of bravado

in amongst them, you could see how they could egg themselves onto doing

more and more and then one thing would just lead to another.

Four members of the gang went from thrill-seeking

to more advanced and dangerous levels of car crime.

Difficult to pinch cars these days. They want the keys.

A lot of people, UPVC doors, don't lock the doors properly,

so the family can be sat there watching Coronation Street

and you've got a bunch of lunatics come bursting in your lounge,

wanting the keys to your car - what are you going to do?

In this investigation,

there was people breaking into people's houses.

I would suggest that's more...

That takes more than one person to do that.

They work as a small team.

It was fuelled by a lot of egos

and trying to outdo each other, I think.

Some of them, certainly, were carried along with it.

There were some key players, but...

Once you got them all together, they were all as bad as each other.

I would say they were quite organised.

I think they would be at the bottom end -

they are the risk-takers, the ones committing the crimes

to get the vehicle, breaking into people's houses.

The gang didn't think twice about going online

and advertising their progression up the criminal ladder.

The first person I heard about was Lucas Hunter.

It came to my attention that there was some

photographs on Facebook of him with cars,

or certainly some comments of him with some stolen cars.

There was pictures of, certainly the guys that we were

talking about inside the vehicles, they were wearing gloves,

it appeared to be a nice day, they had short sleeves on -

it just looked peculiar that they were wearing gloves.

There was pictures of them stood in front of the vehicles

with their legs stood across the number plate,

leaving maybe only one letter or number in that registration,

stood posing with a key, almost as a trophy.

It's something we're used to. People who have committed dwelling

house burglaries or a lot of crime - they do wear gloves

and it's an old tried-and-tested way of hiding your fingerprints.

Maybe they didn't think the police would find out about Facebook -

maybe they didn't think we knew about Facebook.

They thought we were all a bit old for Facebook.

When you think about all the technology the police

have got access to, why they think that we wouldn't be able to access

Facebook accounts, I have no idea.

After posting their crimes, four members of the so-called

Ryder Brow Soldiers were charged and convicted of various offences.

They received sentences ranging from 15 months

to almost four and a half years.

-I suppose in a way it makes your job easier?

-Yes, it has done.

Yes - long may it continue. Stupidity!

It's the key to cracking crime.

Hey, babe.

I just wanted to remind you how beautiful and perfect you are,

inside and out.

I love you. You are the best part of me, without you I'm half a person.

You are the love of my life.

One day I'll wake up and be beside you again.

I'll be happy, because I'll be with you.

Until then, I've just got to wait. Yours always.

Joe Pomeroy, the oldest of three boys, was born in 1987.

We were pretty sure it was going to be a boy

and we even started

calling him Joseph before he was born,

so it would have been a bit of shock had it been a girl.

Because he was the first, we both had a lot of time to spend with him.

Changed our lives, as it does everybody's, when you have children.

Joe grew up in a rural village in Wales, with his three best mates,

Gareth Winyard, Jon Jones, and Josh Roberts.

Hello, I want food, please. Can I have food?

If you complete the bush tucker trial, you can obviously have food.

Joe was so open, so friendly.

I think he didn't really have any aggressiveness or animosity

to other people.

I think people can relate to that, you feel drawn to him.

Josh has been successfully evicted from the Big Brother house!

Even from a young age, I guess, he had that skill -

once you see him, you're friends - that's it.

Cos we're a close-knit village,

we were just really a close bunch, isn't it?

We weren't from a big town, it was a little village,

so it was a really close group.

It was me, Josh, Joe, Gaz.

Joe was kind of our leader, in a sense.

Gaz, like any of us, he looked up to Joe, respected Joe,

loved Joe, as well.

Gaz was one of his best mates in the village.

He lived a street away from him and he was a bit younger,

so a lot of the time

when I saw them together,

Gaz did look up to him as a bit of a teacher and older brother.

As Joe grew up with Josh, Jon and Gareth,

it soon became clear that he was academically gifted.

Mathematics, he was just... He was unrivalled.

He'd been offered scholarships to go to universities to do maths.

I think he was in the top percentiles for Britain for mathematics.

Truly, academically, I think he was a genius.

Not in the overused sense of the word.

Today, you get kids saying, "that's genius,"

and that's what have you, but Joe was,

in the classical sense, a genius.

Even when he went away to university,

Joe kept in constant touch with his friends back home.

One of the things he was quite good at

was keeping in contact with people.

Whether it was on MSN or by texting people,

he would always have some conversation going.

It didn't surprise me that he had met that many people

-and kept in contact with them.

-Sit there and open your mouth.

As part of the Facebook generation,

Joe documented his love for life for all his friends to see online.

At university, he met his first serious girlfriend.

I just remember the first time I saw him.

I thought, "He's a bit of all right!"

Obviously then, it was just, started talking and instantly hit it off.

I'd always said that my dream was to swim with dolphins

and how I'd always wanted to go to America

and he planned the whole thing out himself.

We went to San Diego, we went to Las Vegas for a couple of nights.

We hired a Mustang and drove from LA to Las Vegas,

a four-litre convertible. That was a beast.

After graduating with a maths degree, Joe moved back to Wales,

to be reunited with his childhood friends.

In these parts, a car quite simply is a lifeline.

Public transport is a mess,

there's a train and bus maybe every two hours.

Around here, it's quite important that you need a car, really.

But it just gives the opportunity for young people

to mess around, really.

-They go too far.

-Do you get a lot of boy racers in this area?

Yeah, there's quite a few going around. Small towns and all that,

so they buy all these cheap cars, soup them up and go round the town

trying to outdo each other by who's got the best car,

who's got the fastest, who's got the new parts for it and all that.

It's just like competing with themselves in little ways like that.

I remember once going on a drive with Gaz and Joe -

going to Aberystwyth just to get a McDonald's.

To me, that seems pretty boring, driving for an hour

or so just to get some food!

But clearly it's something they got a lot of fun out of,

because of that feeling of power, being able to drive fast

and play music loud, windows open.

Something I guess that they got kicks out of.

You hear about these things happening,

but you don't really expect it to happen to you,

but you still worry about it.

Oh, my God, though.

CRASHING Oh, shit. Shit, shit!

Park it down here and get the fuck out now. Stop, stop, stop!

SHE SCREAMS

-Get out, get out, get out.

-I can't!

-Just get out.

I can't get out!

MUFFLED LAUGHTER

Oh, dear God!

I'm going to talk to you about

all those weird stories that you see on the internet.

The funniest viral I saw this week was of three West Country teenagers

who were caught joyriding a double-decker bus.

Now, they would have actually got away with it,

the police hadn't a clue who had stolen bus,

except that one of the teenagers posted a clip of it on YouTube.

That is Jedward levels of stupidity.

That's like stabbing someone in the face with your passport.

It was about 11.30 in the morning, so I couldn't really remember,

because I had a bit of a hangover, but then I checked my phone

and wanted someone to see it.

I thought it was funny and I wanted to see if they thought it was funny.

So I sent it to someone and they put it on YouTube.

So tell me about the morning you heard that a bus had been stolen.

We'd heard that it was a young lad and two girls

and we knew who he hangs around with.

I saw some comments on Facebook from one of the girls.

It said it was good at the time, but that,

"Oh, no, I wish I hadn't done it now."

And I thought, "Yes, it was them."

I just rang him up and said, "I heard a bus has come up

"near where we live.

"I just hope it wasn't any of you. I heard it was three people."

I said, "Were you out last night?" "No, I was in. I was in bed."

I think she knew, just the way I was talking on the phone

and saying I had nothing to do with it.

-I think she knew deep down that I did it.

-Mothers' intuition?

-Yeah.

That's the one.

You can't get away from the fact it's all over YouTube.

What a stupid thing to do.

If you're going to do something like that, why put it on YouTube?

That's when all the nasty comments came on.

Like saying, "Blame it on the parents,"

or "They shouldn't have been born," or things like that.

Real nasty things.

In the end, we had to get in touch and asked them

to take the comments off because it was just so upsetting.

Why do you think he filmed himself?

Kids do anything these days with their mobiles.

They think anything is funny, anything good, they will film it.

I think it's to see how many hits you can get.

After the footage of Sam had been uploaded onto YouTube,

it wasn't long before the police came looking for him.

I heard a loud bang at the door and...

I was thinking, "Oh no, what's that?"

I looked out and seen a police car there and I was like, "Oh, no."

My heart just sunk. I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know whether to go out then, or just stay put until they went.

Later that day, I spoke to him and said, "Look, if you done it...

He said, "I have done it." He said the police had been round,

but he hadn't answered.

I said, "You should go and hand yourself in."

I decided to get it over and done with, basically.

They knew it was me, because they were knocking on my door.

So...I just thought I'm going to have to face the music.

Sam was charged with stealing a bus and criminal damage.

As he prepared to face a judge in the County Court,

the consequences of his drunken prank began to take their toll.

Building up to it, I was just...

getting drunk every day, just to try and block it out.

Taking antidepressants and trying to block it.

It just kept dragging on and on.

He kept appearing to go to court and it kept getting adjourned.

I didn't know what was going to happen -

I knew I was going to get sent down, but I thought it was going to be

for a really long time and I started feeling suicidal.

He was getting very down.

He kept saying that he wanted to end his life

because he didn't want to be sent into prison.

He ended up in hospital because he went to the bridge and jumped.

He broke his ankles and ended up in hospital having an operation.

He had to have pins put in.

I'm glad I didn't die at the end of it.

It was just a stupid mistake that popped into my head.

I acted impulsively on it.

Sam received a 15-month driving ban

and a sentence of six months in prison,

but ended up serving just nine weeks.

What was prison like?

It wasn't as bad as I thought was going to be.

I got on with everyone there. They recognised me anyway.

They seen it on TV in prison, on the news.

Then, they said what am I in for, and I told them

and they said, "I've seen that on TV" and they said, "fair play."

No-one was injured when Sam went on his joyride in a bus.

But every day, five people die on British roads

and almost one in four is under 25.

The plan was to go to Aberystwyth to go Christmas shopping,

because it was just before Christmas.

About 20 days, something like that.

Gazza stayed at my house the night before.

We texted Joe to meet us so we could get off.

Like an overcast day, I suppose. The roads were quite damp.

It had been drizzling.

I'm sure it was drizzling, actually, on the way to Aber.

The roads were a bit greasy.

Gaz was driving obviously,

I was in the front and Joe was behind me, I think.

We were just chatting away,

listening to music as anybody would in the car.

It was just a normal drive, I think.

Quite an erratic drive, just normal of Gaz, nothing was different there.

When you say erratic...?

It was just an above-average pace of driving, if you like.

Driving fast, basically.

Just needlessly driving fast, I suppose.

We came up to these corners and Gaz lost control of his vehicle.

Um, and then... I can remember...

I can remember bracing myself,

because I knew we were going to come off the road.

The car was fish-tailing, so I knew

we were going to come off the road and so I just braced myself and...

just blacked out then.

I remember waking up.

The car was in the ditch, pointing downwards in the ditch.

I remember waking up and Gaz was saying to Joe, I think, shouting.

He was saying he wasn't breathing, he wasn't breathing.

I got out the car. I was bleeding quite badly from my head.

Managed to make my way onto the road and I flagged down the traffic.

I can't remember exact details.

I actually arrived at the scene,

fire brigade and ambulance already here.

Joseph Pomeroy had been taken out of his car

and was in the back of the ambulance when I got here.

The weather was atrocious at the time.

It was raining really hard and it was dark.

We found a tyre track in the middle of the road

that corresponded to his rear offside tyre,

that showed he was going around in a bit of an arc like that.

He's then overcompensated by steering sharp to the right.

He came across the road here and was heading into this gap,

but when he came off the road surface,

he was travelling in this direction.

The front of the car was facing that way.

As he's gone off, he's gone sideways, like that, so the tree itself

was collided with the roof and the back window,

or the back passenger window of the car,

which is where Joseph Pomeroy was actually sitting.

So he's gone sideways into the tree.

The car has wrapped itself around the tree to a certain extent

and then dropped onto the driver's side into the water down below.

Initially, the biggest problem I have at the scene of a collision like this,

where somebody has been killed,

because everybody has got mobile phones and Twitter

and all the rest of it, our biggest problem is that we have to rush

to try and tell the families first, before they find out any other way.

I was upstairs and I saw...

It was about the time Joe was going to come home

and I saw a car pull up in the drive.

It had a roof rack on it and I thought, that's odd -

don't know any people with roof racks, then the doorbell went

and it was two police officers and I realised that the car -

it was the lights on top of the roof, it was a police car.

I realised it was serious because two police officers turned up.

They... They just told me straight that there had been a crash

and that Joe had been killed.

We were just at my brother's flat when David phoned and, er...

My brother gave me the phone straightaway.

David had just said, "Can I speak to Sue?"

He knew something was up.

And, er...

I mean, there's just no describing the feeling.

-I almost fell over, really.

-I got to see Joe in the mortuary.

He was still warm. You know, he hadn't been dead that long.

So there was still some warmth there. But he was a bit...

Bloated and... Well, he'd been in a car crash.

Blood coming out of his ears and nose. I just burst into tears.

Tried to mop some of the blood off, just thought

if I clean him up, maybe he'll come back.

You just can't imagine seeing your own child lifeless.

First off, as soon as I heard it, I didn't want to believe it.

Because that weekend, they had been down to Cardiff to see Hayley

and on their way back, they called me to see if I wanted to go

to Aber with them, so I could have been in that car as well.

I was at home, actually.

I remember Mum coming in, looking, er... Looking quite pale.

Sort of hand on her mouth.

She turned to me and said, "Have you heard the news?"

And I said, because I was tired, I said, "What?"

She said, "It's Joe." "What about Joe?"

And er, she said, "He's dead."

This, it's one of those things,

you think it's a Chinese whispers to begin with.

In a place like this, you always hear bad news

and it's always worse than it is.

That's the first thing that came to mind.

A friend of Pom's from Wales, Martin, who I'd met quite a few times previously,

he rang me up and said that there was something

about Joe on his Facebook wall that he didn't really understand,

and I guess at the time he didn't want to believe it was true.

And, er...

Then I looked at that myself and saw that people had written condolence messages

and things saying goodbye.

And so, then it kicked in.

Back then, it was, like, Facebook was a pretty newish thing to me,

so I was on there every day.

You get into this craze of everything that happens,

you have to post up.

Seeing other people have lost people

and you just hear about all these memorial pages on Facebook.

In memory of, you pay your respects on that.

So... Yeah.

I fully understand that I was probably the first one

to write on his page.

I love you, man!

I don't want to believe any of it. You're my best friend,

you showed me how to enjoy life and were always there when I needed you.

The memories I hold, I will cherish.

I just can't believe that you are gone!

I will never forget you, Joe.

As the news of Joe's death spread on Facebook,

Hayley received a text message from one of his friends.

I thought it was some sick joke.

I asked him what he meant, what had he done?

I texted Joe, I rang Joe, I rang Jonno countless times as well,

because they are the only people whose numbers I had.

Um...

Then, because I wasn't getting any answer,

I phoned Joe's house phone.

And then, obviously, got the confirmation.

The image, my mum's face,

as she came in with her hand on her mouth...

..looking ghostly, I think...

..convinced me that it could be true.

'A man has died after the car he was travelling in

'crashed on the road near Machynlleth in Powys.

'The second man, who suffered serious injuries in the accident

'on Sunday is being treated in hospital...'

As the news of Joe's death was confirmed,

it was revealed that driving the car was his best friend Gareth.

I said to my mum, when she called me up,

I said on the phone, "Gareth was driving, wasn't he?"

And she said "Yes". I think...

That speaks volumes for him, to know that everyone knew he was driving.

I was put in charge of deciding who would be a pallbearer for Pom,

and as Gaz was one of his best friends, I knew that even though

he was the perpetrator in some people's eyes,

that he should be there.

-We didn't object at the time.

-No.

We just thought, it must be a terrible accident...

Something that just happened.

I think we were all very supportive of Gaz.

I remember being at the grave and having my arm around him,

because he was in tears and I think Gaz was one of the strong characters.

So to see him in tears, it was clear that he was...

You'd never see Gaz in tears otherwise. Yeah.

He was a very strong character and to see him like that,

it meant something that what happened had happened.

It really, really cut Gaz and again, in the church,

we were supportive of him afterwards, but...

We extended that sort of...

friendship to him, we maintained that friendship to him,

but it wasn't really reciprocated.

It was after the funeral, as far as I knew, immediately after,

he kind of severed all ties.

Within a week or so,

there was pictures of him going out, having fun,

getting drunk on Facebook.

And then just things that he'd put up on there were just

as if nothing had happened.

-After the funeral, Gareth never came up, did he?

-No.

Never heard from him again.

Really, after the funeral, it started...

our thoughts started to change.

Some people didn't go to the funeral

because Gareth was going. That made us think, "Why?"

In 2010, there were almost half a million reported incidents

of car crime in Britain.

I guess, like a lot of guys, I'm just a bit of a petrol head.

I like the noise, smell - it's the same with motorbikes.

It's just a very sort of gear-head attitude, I guess.

Probably a bit of a boy thing, in as much as it's fast cars, chases.

I enjoy that sort of thing -

not necessarily the thrill of the chase,

but I do enjoy the cops-and-robbers element of it and winning.

We operate at the maximum speeds of the vehicles that we use

and in the vast majority of cases, those are limited to 155 mph.

There are odd occasions where you can get up towards those sort of speeds.

I think we have become slightly desensitised to speed.

The speed of 100 miles an hour to most people don't mean anything.

People feel overly protected by these metal boxes they are driving.

They think that if something goes wrong at 100 miles an hour, that yes,

there will be a horrible crash, but they will walk away from it.

One morning in April 2011, Heath was starting a patrol like any other.

It's all right, isn't it?

We'd been informed by the control room that there had been

an activation on one of the automatic number plate cameras in Peterborough.

So that was less than half a mile away from us,

so it was just a case of travelling towards each other,

so we just made progress to the roundabout

where I caught a glimpse of what genuinely looked like a red Mercedes.

Once I'd got the number plate clarified and was 100% sure

we were behind the vehicle, it was in traffic at a junction on London Road.

Element of surprise, we were in an unmarked car,

could quite easily have opened the door,

set of handcuffs and that's the end of it.

-That didn't work...

-Why?

The fact we had our sirens on was probably a reasonable reason.

SIRENS WAIL

-I've been on the railway since 1977.

-TRAIN HORN

So I was 35 years on the railway,

I've been a driver in my own right since '82.

I suppose, inherently, the job was safe.

It's just other people you have to be aware of.

CRACKLY RADIO RECORDING

London Road... Across the green traffic lights...

'It still raises the hairs on the back of my neck, just looking at it.

'Go through all the thought processes and everything.'

We're back through a residential area here, at 50, 60 miles an hour.

The traffic's light, but if I'm honest with you,

it's on the edge of what we'd be prepared to accept and follow at.

There was so much going through my mind, if I'm honest with you.

Approaching the double roundabout.

It was an afternoon shift,

probably around two or three o'clock in the afternoon.

It was a fairly full unit of people standing.

Somewhere in the region of 200 plus.

Everything just went as normal.

'I can hear the flutter in my own voice,

'but you're desperately trying to sound calm,

'because it's important that you're calm

'and get the right information across'

and get some good instructions across as to where we were heading

and the sort of conditions we were up against.

'Even now, I still feel a bit light in my tummy when I watch it.'

..Towards the fire station...

'..see if we can get this thing up and running.

'Helicopter notified, please.

'Dog en route, if you've got one available.'

Wrong side of the road...

'One minute, you're thinking,

' I'm going to call it off, next minute,

'no, I'll let it run for a little while.'

I think that would have been much the same to him at any given stage.

All he's got to do is indicate to the left and pull over

and it's finished, isn't it?

'It frightens me, the way I didn't see it sooner.

'As we're approaching the railway crossing,

'and there's no oncoming traffic, it still didn't twig with me

'that that was primarily because the level crossing was down.'

There's no way on this earth we were going through that.

No, I never in a million years

thought he'd go through the train barrier.

I've seen a red flash and at the same time as I saw the debris,

and put the brake on, I could hear the police siren through the window.

Just basically pressed the brake as an emergency and hoped for the best.

I remember hearing there were passengers on it

and it sort of sunk in then what I could have been involved in.

And it made me shudder. It really made me shudder.

I thought, it sort of...

I got quite emotional, if I'm honest and thought...

"I could be partly responsible for a horrendous accident."

I mean, the death toll alone would have been...

It's not worth thinking about.

Really can't see how people like that, how their minds work.

No regard for his safety

and especially my safety as well, and my passengers.

The vehicle was found some miles further up the road, abandoned,

with substantial damage to the front and the windscreen.

There was DNA left actually in the damaged windscreen.

Eventually, 20-year-old Terence Fowler was arrested and charged

with a variety of offences, including reckless driving.

He received a sentence of three and a half years in prison.

The one thing I would actually like to know is why he didn't stop.

Why not just pull over? It's just a stolen car, at the end of the day.

What was so important, because accidents, collisions,

whatever you want to call them, they happen.

As a result, people die. It's almost become, well, it happens.

That's fine, until you're the one who's got to deal with it,

or you're immediate family or closely related to someone

involved in something like that and, yeah, it's life changing.

In the aftermath of Joe Pomeroy's death,

Gareth Winyard's driving became the focus of the investigation.

It soon emerged this wasn't the first time Gareth,

who had recently lost his father, had been involved in a crash.

He'd been convicted of drink-driving before,

he'd been involved in a collision before.

But he obviously had his licence back.

But for a collision like this,

what I've got to be able to concentrate on is his driving

just before the collision and at the time of the collision.

I've obviously seen him speeding, the police have seen him

do this or the other, driving maybe a little bit too quickly.

I took a statement from a local garage owner up in the village.

He changed the tyres on the car about four times in 12 months.

And when I spoke to the garage owner,

as far as he was concerned, the only reason you need to do that is

because he was doing so many wheel spins and boy racer type moves,

he wore out four sets of tyres in a year.

Gaz was a very sort of "look at me" kind of person.

He always had to be the alpha sort of guy.

When he got his car, it was kind of just an extension onto that.

It was him, just trying to one-up.

I did know that Gaz was a previous offender for this kind of thing,

but it never really struck me as something too serious.

He seemed to talk about that kind of thing as if it was a film.

You do really when you're young, you just assume you're immortal.

You don't think the worst thing, do you?

There is no point of saying, "Can you slow down?"

Is just not the thing to do, is it?

Many held Gareth responsible.

Others were prepared to take into account

his father's illness and recent death,

accepting that this had had a profound effect on him.

It was obviously mixed emotions...

About Gaz, his situation, some people loved him,

some people felt sorry for him.

I was definitely one of those people that felt bad for Gaz.

In the sense that he didn't get in that car

to kill one of his best friends.

I hadn't known that he hadn't spoken to Sue and Dave

or anything about it, so I presumed everything was,

not sorted - that's a horrible thing to say -

but everything had been spoken about, if you like.

I thought things were under control.

I didn't know at this point that he hadn't acknowledged

to Sue and Dave what had happened, or apologised or anything.

So, you know, I...

My reaction was, I wouldn't mind getting back friends with him

because at the end of the day, it was an accident,

it's happened, people have got to move on, haven't they?

But how he's reacted, it could have been different, couldn't it, really?

I would like to think that he lives every day

with a little bit of regret that he is constantly thinking that

if I had just done this, or hadn't done that,

that things would be completely different.

I'm sure he is. He was his best friend as well.

Nobody wants that to happen to their best friend.

Do you think he needed Joe more than ever?

Trying to deal with what he had done?

I think if that car crash had had any other person die in it,

then Joe would have been the rock that held Gaz together.

But without Joe, I guess Gaz just

crumbled a little bit and didn't know where to turn.

The investigation into Joe's death took almost six months to complete.

Eventually, Gareth Winyard pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving.

He received a 16-month prison sentence.

I think we would have liked it to have been longer,

not just as a punishment to him, but to show other people

that it wasn't socially acceptable to do that sort of thing.

It wasn't really an accident.

I mean, if you go into a crowded pub with a gun

and start shooting randomly, then you're going to kill somebody.

It's just the same with driving like that.

You've got a car, you drive like that,

sooner or later, you're going to kill somebody.

It must be really difficult for Gareth to maintain friendships

with people he's obviously hurt.

Sure you've heard it by now, but everyone was a victim,

everyone who knew Joe was a victim of what happened...

..and for Gaz I think it must have been incredibly difficult.

I can understand from his point of view, I guess,

it must have been damn near impossible to have Dave and Sue forgive him,

to be able to look at them and be able to get on as normal, as it were,

after it happened - it must be quite tortuous.

I know that for a couple of weeks after that,

I was really, really depressed

and so just writing on his wall constantly and...

At that point, you think, if he wrote back,

or if he knocked on the door now, I wouldn't be at all surprised,

it wouldn't be like, "Oh, my God, you're alive,"

because you still don't believe that he has actually gone.

Facebook in a way kept him alive.

Two years on, Joe's page is still active.

It's weird writing on the wall like that,

because he's never going to read it.

You don't know who you're writing to, really.

Sometimes messages are there just for the sake of the person writing them,

so they can voice their thoughts aloud.

Sometimes it's there to comfort everyone else who knew him.

I think it's testament to the guy that people still remember Joe.

They still find time to say, "Hey, I'm thinking of you."

For me, it's not the best thing to get over a person.

Instead of just like, that moment has passed now,

don't forget about it, just move on, sort of thing.

The bond forged between us is not one that can be broken by absence,

distance or time.

I love you more than you'll ever know, Joe Pomeroy.

You always were and always will be the man of my dreams.

How does writing messages like that

help you deal with what happened to Joe?

It feels like talking to him.

Sort of telling him stuff that you've done.

It's a big help, actually.

CRACKLY POLICE RADIO

As part of a road safety initiative,

police released the footage of Terence Fowler's reckless driving.

It became an instant hit on YouTube.

I think it became such an internet hit

because it's one of those things you have to watch just to believe it.

You can't believe that somebody would do that.

Terence Fowler essentially obtained a reasonable level of kudos

from this particular incident.

I think there are people that are quite willing to do silly things

for such recognition.

Fortunately, they are few and far between.

After serving his nine-week jail sentence for stealing a bus,

Sam Hobson has just got his driving licence back.

But he still hasn't deleted the footage off his phone.

I suppose it's a memory I can look back at that.

I know it was a stupid idea and a stupid thing to do,

but you do that and you stand out more to everyone.

I wouldn't do it again. I've done it now and I'm not going to do it again.

Three of the so-called Ryder Brow Soldiers are still inside.

But the police are sceptical

on whether or not this will be the end of their criminal careers.

I would imagine we'll probably see them again, in honesty.

Prison has differing effects on different people.

Some people just can't stand it,

other people almost enjoy it in a perverse sort of way.

You're getting fed, you're with your mates who are like-minded,

you just talk rubbish all day.

Then go to sleep and start again the next day.

And for killing his best friend Joe Pomeroy,

Gareth Winyard served eight months of his 16-month prison sentence.

He still lives in the village of Llwyngwril,

just 300 yards from Joe's family.

He's got what he deserved, hasn't he?

He committed the crime, he should pay his time.

But it's not going to bring back Joe, at the end of the day, is it?

It won't bring back Joe.

Everyone's got an opinion on young people and crime.

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