INVESTIGATION: Police failures contributed to the death of Dorothy Groce whose shooting by an officer triggered the 1985 Brixton riots, an inquest found yesterday.

Ms Groce, known as Cherry, was paralysed after being shot by armed police who were searching for her son in a planned raid at her home in south London.

A jury at at Southwark Coroner’s Court found that police failed to communicate properly during the hunt for Michael Groce and to adequately check who was living at the address before the raid.

Mother-of-eight Ms Groce died in 2011, 26 years after the shooting, from kidney failure which a pathologist directly linked to the gunshot injury. She was 63. 

Metropolitan Police Inspector Douglas Lovelock was acquitted in 1987 of inflicting unlawful and malicious grievous bodily harm.
Mr Lovelock, who admitted being responsible for the wound, told the inquest he had been apprehensive prior to the operation.