Fatal London crash may have been avoided but police were sent to wrong place, says coroner

The Metropolitan Police has changed the way its 999 call handlers are trained after officers were sent to the wrong location of a crash before a subsequent collision which killed three people.

Sachin Kalia, 19, Davina Kaur Ruprah, 24, and Kiranjeet Sagoo, 36, were travelling westbound on the A13 in east London and died after a collision on the Wennington junction on July 15, 2024.

An inquest at Walthamstow coroner’s court found that the fatal collision could have been avoided “if the MPS attending officers had been provided with the correct location and arrived in sufficient time to clear the first incident”.

It also found the cause of death was a collision “caused by the driver losing control whilst driving at high speed in adverse weather conditions”.

The fatal collision could also have been avoided had a Ford Transit van had not been parked within the central reservation after the first incident, the jury added.

Mr Kalia, Ms Ruprah, and Mr Sagoo were pronounced dead at the scene in Wennington Marshes, Rainham.

The first crash occurred around 9.12pm, when the driver of a speeding BMW One series lost control and collided with a Ford Transit, which ended up on the central reservation, slightly protruding onto lane three.

The crash took place on the A13 in east London

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A passing driver called the Met at 9.19pm and twice told them the site of the first crash was Wennington junction between the A13 and A1306.

Coroner Nina Persaud has sent a prevention of future deaths report, raising concerns about the failure to record the correct location.

The coroner noted: “The MPS call handler did not note the Wennington junction as the location of the incident in the ‘remarks’ section available to her and the computer system only listed the incorrect Dagenham junction between the A13 and the A1306 as a possible location.”

As a result, officers were sent to the wrong location and found no trace of the incident despite checking one further junction in either direction.

She wrote: “Had the officers been provided with the correct location, they would likely have arrived before the time of the second collision.

“If they had arrived before the second collision, the officers were trained to park their car in the ‘fend off’ position, so as to slow the traffic in the lanes two and three, and minimise the risk to other road users.

“They may have also elected to remove the Ford Transit from the central reservation. Therefore, had the MPS officers attended the correct location, it is likely that the fatal collision could have been avoided.”

The call handler did not record the correct location of the first crash despite twice being told of the precise junction by the caller.

The mistake was spotted by the force later in the evening on the day of the crash, but the supervisory team did not talk to the call handler about it or give feedback, training or additional supervision.

The coroner noted: “Call handlers undertake a vital role in ensuring prompt and accurate responses to emergency situations, often with lives at risk.”

The coroner also said there was “a great deal of confusion” about the precise location and a reliance on mobile phone location systems, which could be imprecise and “raise the risk of call handlers not giving full attention to the information provided by the caller”.

She said the precise location was eventually established using What3Words.

In its response to the coroners’ concerns, the Metropolitan Police said it “acknowledges the seriousness of the recording error and the absence of immediate supervisory intervention”.

The force added: “The initial location provided by the caller was incorrectly entered and the opportunity to identify this at the earliest stage was missed.”

The force said the call handler, who first learned of the mistake at a meeting with the Met Command and Control (MetCC) inquest team a week after the incident, would undertake a structured period of “learning through reflection”.

The call handler has also voluntarily taken part in training material for other operators about the potentially serious consequences of failing to record full details correctly.

An “over-reliance” on imprecise mobile phone location technology was also highlighted by the coroner.

The force responded: “The MPS accepts the concerns raised regarding the limitations of mobile phone mast data and the need for more robust methods of establishing exact caller locations.”

It said What3Words has now been formally incorporated into its 2026 training syllabus and all new call handlers are trained to request, recognise and use the codes.

Updated guidance and training makes clear that verbal descriptions from callers must be prioritised and mast data should be treated only as a supplementary indicator.