Stephen Morgan : 'Endangered' Pc Stone

The jury at Swansea Crown Court has been sent home for a second night to decide the last remaining charge of damaging an Army checkpoint intending to endanger life.

On Tuesday, the jury also cleared Morgan of two charges of damaging property with intent to endanger life, when he drove a bulldozer during a protest against animal carcass burials in mid Wales.

The farm worker was found not guilty on three separate counts of damaging property and being reckless as to whether life was endangered.

Morgan has admitted aggravated vehicle taking and dangerous driving.

The prosecution had claimed that Morgan deliberately rammed police vehicles in a stolen bulldozer in a drunken bid to prevent carcasses being buried on an army range at Sennybridge near Brecon.

Morgan had denied the charge of attempted murder.

He claimed he had lost control of the 15-ton vehicle before it crushed a police van, while Pc John Stone was still at the wheel.

Swansea Crown Court has heard how Morgan was at the controls of the earth-moving machine when it went on a two-mile rampage in the early hours of 1 April.

It finished with the police officer being left trapped in a squad car squashed to below waist height.

Pc John Stone: Terrified

Morgan told the jury he knew he was committing a criminal offence when he climbed into the cab of the bulldozer and set off to block the road leading to the proposed burial site on Eppynt mountain near Brecon.

He was one of up to 150 protesters trying to blockade the army range at Sennybridge, Powys, which had been earmarked as a disposal site.

He said he believed it was better to have broken the law than to have allowed diseased carcasses to ruin the Welsh countryside and had refused offers of work on the burial ground for that reason.

'Mown down'

Morgan also denied damaging seven vehicles with intent to endanger the lives of their occupants.

Earlier in the trial, he was cleared on the directions of Mr Justice Roderick Evans of damaging two Ministry of Defence vehicles and assaulting a soldier.

Under cross-examination in the trial, he said that he did not see the police van containing Pc Stone until he had run over it.

He also said he had no idea he had mown down an army checkpoint.

The defendant admits dangerous driving

Morgan, who is licensed to drive heavy machinery, said he had drunk eight pints of lager before climbing into the cab of the machine and setting off from a contractors' compound on the mountain.

Pc Stone told how he was trapped in his wrecked van for two hours after colleagues looked on in the belief that he had been crushed to death.

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