A Surrey landscaper has been convicted of murdering two young men after deliberately crashing his pickup truck into their e-bike, having wrongly believed they had tried to break into his home.
Alex Rose, 30, was found guilty at Guildford Crown Court on Wednesday of the murders of William Birchard, 21, and Darren George, 22, after a late-night chase in July last year ended on a motorway slip road. Rose’s friend Charles Pardoe, 25, was also convicted of murder, and Rose’s girlfriend, Tara Knaggs, 24, was found guilty of assisting an offender.
Jurors heard that on the night of July 21 Rose saw movement outside his home in Sunbury, Surrey, at about 11:40 p.m. and believed someone was attempting to burgle the property. He called Pardoe and the pair spent about an hour searching the local area before spotting Birchard and George, who had been out to meet a friend at a pub and were not near Rose’s address at the time of the alleged attempted break-in, the court was told.
Prosecutors said Rose pursued the two men in his Ford Raptor pick-up, driving the wrong way down a slip road from the A316 southbound onto the M3 at speeds in excess of 60 mph in 30 mph areas, and intentionally collided with their e-bike shortly after midnight on July 22. Birchard died at the scene; George later died of catastrophic head injuries.
After the collision, Rose abandoned his truck in a street and ran home on foot, then telephoned police to claim his vehicle had been stolen, the jury was told. He and Knaggs later tried to leave the country, travelling to Birmingham Airport where Knaggs initially attempted to book flights to Thailand and then secured one-way tickets to Istanbul. The pair were arrested in the departure lounge before boarding; they had no luggage and were carrying about £4,000 in cash, according to evidence presented at trial. Knaggs told police the trip was intended as a surprise for her birthday, the court heard.
Crown Prosecutor Mary Walford 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.”
At trial, the prosecution presented evidence to counter the defendants’ claims that the deaths were accidental, including mobile-phone and CCTV records, witness testimony about the chase and collision, and forensic analysis of the crash. The jury concluded that Rose had intentionally driven at the victims and that Pardoe had assisted or encouraged him.
The convictions follow an investigation into driving conduct on the slip road and the actions of the three defendants in the hours after the crash. Police and prosecution statements said the victims had not been involved in any attempted burglary at Rose’s home.
Sentencing details were not included in court reporting on the verdict; further hearings are expected to determine the penalties. The case has prompted renewed calls from local campaigners and officials for clearer measures to prevent vigilante-style confrontations and for education about the dangers of using vehicles as weapons, though no policy changes were announced in court proceedings.
The two victims’ families were represented at the trial and described the killings as a devastating loss. Court reporting emphasised the jury’s finding that mistaken belief of criminality did not justify the use of lethal force in this incident, and that the defendants’ subsequent attempts to conceal their actions formed part of the evidence considered by jurors.