Van following boys was half a mile away from Cardiff crash, police say

A police officer had a grudge against the two teenagers and had previously tried to “run them off the road”, a friend has claimed.

John Silver, 19, who said he was a friend of Kyrees Sullivan and Harvey Evans, told the Daily Mail the police have had issues with e-bikes in the area.

“They are legal but the police don’t like the boys on them,” he alleged.

“The police say they weren’t chasing the boys but if that officer was in the area they would want to keep away from him.”

Mr Drakeford said there is “repair work to be done” between police and the community of Ely.

He said: “Well, I think there is repair work to be done in that relationship.

“I think there has been an anxiety, not just this week but over a period of time, that the police don’t have the capacity they need to respond to crime committed or antisocial behaviour that takes place, and if people don’t have confidence that if things go wrong and they don’t get the response that is needed, that can breed a longer-term sense of lack of trust in public authorities.”

He said: “There are questions for police to answer, we know they have referred themselves to the independent investigation service, we must allow that to do its job.

People must wait for South Wales Police to be investigated before making a judgment, he said.

Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford said he was looking to hold a meeting with public authorities to see whether more could be done in the community of Ely following the disorder.

He said: “13,000 people live in Ely. It is larger than almost any Welsh town, so it’s an area which has a huge mix of people in it and what we saw on Monday in no way at all represents the bulk of people who live in that part of Cardiff.

“The events themselves, as we know, will be investigated by police.

“I hope myself to convene a meeting on Friday of main public authorities to look at not what happened on Monday night but the background of precipitating causes to see just what more we can do to give confidence to people on the estate, that the police have the resources they need to respond effectively and promptly to incidents that happen, and whether there is more that can be done to help young people growing up in that area.”

The first minister of Wales has defended a police and crime commissioner (PCC) who denied officers had been chasing two teenagers on a bike minutes before they were killed in a road accident.

Mark Drakeford suggested Alun Michael, the PCC for South Wales, was “entitled” to rely on information supplied to him by South Wales Police.

Mr Michael had denied there had been a pursuit but was contradicted within hours by video footage showing a marked police van following two boys on a bike.

He later said he had been “assured and I am still assured youths were not being chased by the police at the time of the road traffic accident”.

Mr Drakeford said calls for Mr Michael to quit were to “trivialise the reaction to these tragic events”.

“I’m very determined not to turn anything that happened in Ely into a political football involving individuals,” he told the BBC.

It will take years for the Ely community’s reputation to recover, the Welsh first minister has predicted.

Mark Drakeford said he had “sorrow” for the family and friends of the teenage boys who died on Monday, but also for the wider community.

“My main thoughts were of just profound sorrow for two young lives that have been lost and their families and their friends, and everything it will mean to them,” he told the BBC.

“But also profound sorrow for that wider community in Ely, which is full of utterly decent, hard-working people that ask only to lead their lives in a way that is peaceful and unmolested, and the reputational damage that is done by the scenes that we saw takes years for a community to recover.”

The families of Harvey Evans and Kyrees Sullivan paid tribute to the “best friends” as they released a photograph of the pair as young children.

“They were loved by not only their families but by their community as well,” they said.

No police officers have been questioned under caution since Monday’s disorder in Ely, Deputy Chief Constable Rachel Bacon said.

She then left the press conference amid confusion as numerous questions were being asked.