Imagine driving your car and then seeing an exhausted cop losing sight of a suspect who had run away on foot. Many people would choose not to get involved, but one woman in Wales decided to give the officer an assist and told him to hop into her car. As caught on bodycam video, the woman ultimately helped the cop catch a man who had been recklessly driving throughout town.
Suspect almost escapes on foot during hot pursuit
In May 2026, PC Peter Kerswell was chasing a man, later identified as 25-year-old Jacob Roberts, on foot when he was offered a lift by a female driver named Mel, according to a reports from ITV News, BBC, and South Wales Police.
Bodycam footage shows officers in the town of Abercwmboi, Rhondda Cynon Taf, being suspicious of a driver of a white van after smelling cannabis coming from the vehicle. In Wales, cannabis is a Class B drug, meaning that it is illegal to possess, supply, or produce cannabis, per South Wales Police.
Police say that when the officers attempted to pull the van over, Roberts sped off instead. A longer clip of the pursuit posted by BBC Wales News shows the officer saying that Roberts was throwing items out of the driver’s window before the van goes off-road onto the grassed area of a park.
Additional footage shows the van going around cars by mounting onto the pavement, with police saying that he was “travelling at excess speed, failing to stop at multiple junctions” and had “reverse rammed the pursuing police car twice.” He had also “collided with parked cars and a building during the pursuit.”
Roberts then headed into a rear lane, a narrow backstreet that turned into a dead end. That’s when he opened the door, squeezing through the tight gap between the car and the wall, and bolted off despite the cop yelling, “Stop, police officer with Taser!”
Woman thought that she was in the middle of an action scene
The footage then edits down the foot chase into short clips with Kerswell pursuing the driver on foot through a trail and then down a T-section. That’s when the officer saw a red Nissan Micra in the middle of the street and asked the female driver, Mel, for assistance.
“Oh my gosh, this police officer is completely out of breath,” Mel told ITV News. “He needs a lift.”
As the copper opens the passenger’s side door, Mel is heard telling him to “jump in” and asking the officer “where to?”
“If a policeman asks you for help, you’re going to just do it, aren’t you?” she said. “I mean, I would never say no. I wouldn’t say no to any sort of emergency service.”
Mel recalled the incident like she was in an action scene: “I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I thought I’d been you know, cool, calm, collected at the time. I thought that it only happens in TVs and movies and things like that. My husband does take the mickey out of my driving sometimes, but I think I done well under the circumstances.”
The footage then cuts forward showing Kerswell leaping out of the Micra as he spots Roberts sitting on a large cement block. Armed with a Taser, the officer detains the man, who gets onto his knees and is later brought into custody. Officers searched the suspect and found two cannabis cigarettes on him.
Roberts was sentenced to one year and two months in jail for dangerous driving and he was disqualified from driving for three years. On September 16 at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court, he pled guilty to dangerous driving, driving whilst disqualified, failure to stop after a road accident, criminal damage to property, driving without insurance, and possession of controlled Class B drugs.
