HOW MANY MORE WILL BE KILLED BY... GUN No. 6
That’s the police’s name for Britain’s most wanted weapon – involved in eight crimes and three murders. Most chilling of all? It’s STILL in the hands of criminals
JUDY hodson-Walker had never seen a gun in real life until she came face to face with the one used to kill her son and maim her husband. When three men raided the post office her family ran in a sleepy Worcestershire village — one brandishing a pistol — she thought it was a toy, so outlandish was the alternative.
‘Afterwards the police asked me to draw the weapon and I said “are you joking?” It came
out like a toddler’s drawing,’ she tells me. ‘But I can say this, when it was fired, there was no doubt it was real. A gun going off doesn’t sound anything like you expect it too, either.
People say when a balloon pops, “oh, I thought hought that was a gun”. Well, it is nothing like that. It was like the noise made when a whip is cracked. racked. Then the smell. There is no mistaking that.’
her eldest son Craig, 29, took a bullet through hrough the heart and died almost instantly. When hen the ambulance crews arrived, Judy was frantically ntically trying to revive him in a pool of blood. od. ‘even when the paramedics arrived and nd said “he’s gone”, I couldn’t process it.’
Judy’s husband Kenneth had been shot ot in the leg as he grappled with the intrudcking ders. Tomorrow night, shockingintrudcking CCTV images of the murder der will appear in a BBC film about ut gun crime. The programme is specificially specifiun about one gun — the gun used to murder Craig.
It was never found, but t police know it had been used before. Astonishingly, it has been involved in 11 different shootings, three of f which ended in murder, making it t one of the most wanted guns in Britain. itain.
It was identified following a spike in shootings in the West Midlands lands in the 2000s. So concerned were ere the police about the repeated use se of the same guns — and the need to find them — that they drew up a list of the most dangerous in circulation. lation.
No.6 on that list was the gun un used to murder Craig — a weapon n similar to a 9mm CZ 75 pistol.
It’s a story that could only be told in Britain. In the U.S — which hich has less stringent gun laws — it is more unusual for the same gun to be used in multiple crimes.
In the UK, though, the sharing aring or passing on of a handgun is a gangland gangthem necessity. Identifying them is made possible as every one is s ‘rifled’ during manufacture, meaning g rotating rotatnto grooves are carved into the barrel, allowing the bullet to spin during flight, improving accuracy. uracy.
These
barrels leave e markt markings on the bullet itself itself. Since each barrel is unique, a bullet can be paired to a weapon with astonishing accuracy, much like a fingerprint.
While the ballistics explanations in this film are fascinating, the real power comes from the human stories behind all these crimes.
Craig was in bed in the flat above the shop in Fairfield at 8.21am on that fateful morning in January 2009. his then 57-year- old father had been on the ‘early shift’ putting out the day’s papers.
When he heard screaming, he ran down to see his father grappling with balaclava-wearing raiders. Clad only in his boxers, Craig pushed his mother aside (‘protecting us would have been his only thought,’ she says), and grabbed a cricket bat to confront the attackers.
The CCTV footage was played in Birmingham Crown Court later that year as the three men responsible for Craig’s death were sentenced. Anselm Ribera, 34, and brothers Christopher and Declan Morrissey, 32 and 34 respectively, received life sentences, with the judge calling them ‘parasitic criminals’.
Particularly shocking is how fast it all happens. ‘From beginning to end it only lasted one and a half minutes,’ Judy points out. ‘They say you can’t even clean your teeth properly in that time. I never gave much thought to the actual gun, but when you see how many other people’s lives were affected by it, directly or indirectly, it’s quite shocking.
‘It illustrates how many lives are destroyed when someone takes that decision to carry a gun and pull the trigger.’ The gun came to police attention with a spate of shootings in the West Midlands in 2003 where no information was forthcoming. The wall of silence has, it seems, been a huge contributing factor in the continued journey of Gun No.6.
On June 13, a man was hit in the arm, back and neck in a drive-by shooting. he declined to help the police. The next day, another man was shot in the leg. he also declined to identify his attackers.
The following year, the gun was used in a shoot-out where a parked car was hit. A woman asleep inside had a narrow escape. In the same month, shots were fired through the wall of a house. Again, no one would come forward with information.
‘Could Craig’s death have been prevented if some of those people had said something? We will never know,’ says Judy. ‘But lots of people will have known where that gun came from and who used it.
‘Whether they kept quiet through fear, or mistrust of the police, I don’t know. I do know it’s impossible for the police to do their job if they don’t have people helping them.’
In November 2004, Gun No.6 made its first kill. Ishfaq Ahmed worked as a doorman at a Birmingham nightclub. he dropped his partner Penny and their daughter Anisa at home before heading off for his shift that night — and never came home.
The 24-year- old died in a hail of bullets at 3.30am after he and colleagues had stopped a gang of known trouble-makers from entering the club. The bullet that killed him entered his shoulder and travelled through his chest, shattering the main blood vessel in his abdo-
men. Six men were later sentenced to life for his murder. The murder weapon was not found.
The following year, Gun No.6 was used in another murder. On July 23, 2005, Andrew Huntley was waiting to get into a nightclub, when he was chased and shot twice in the head, execution- style, by a known drug dealer.
His killer, 23- year- old Kemar Whittaker, of Tottenham, North London, is serving a life sentence.
AA fter
that shooting Gun No.6 vanished — only to reappear four years later, in the possession of Anselm ribera, in the HodsonWalkers’ post office.
On the steps of the courtroom, Judy and Kenneth branded their son’s killers ‘evil’ and called for the return of the death penalty.
Has that anger been tempered over the years? ‘No,’ says Judy. ‘We still feel the sentences should be stronger. Life doesn’t mean life. There is no release from our life fter
that shooting Gun No.6 vanished — only to reappear four years later, in the possession of Anselm ribera, in the HodsonWalkers’ post office.
On the steps of the courtroom, Judy and Kenneth branded their son’s killers ‘evil’ and called for the return of the death penalty.
Has that anger been tempered over the years? ‘No,’ says Judy. ‘We still feel the sentences should be stronger. Life doesn’t mean life. There is no release from our life sentence. We cannot escape this pain. They get three meals a day. Their bills are paid. We are the ones who have to carry on.’
There was another, indirect, victim of Gun No.6. During filming, Judy met Alison Cope, ex-partner of robber ribera. The pair were not together when ribera shot Craig, but they did have a son, Joshua, together. It was left to Alison to tell Josh, then 13, that his father had been arrested for murder.
‘He went to pieces. He would not accept it. He smashed up the room,’ she remembers.
When his dad went to prison, Josh went off the rails. He became aggressive and got into trouble, first at school, then with the police. ‘He was a broken little boy,’ says Alison, determined to put her son’s actions into context.
‘He’d ask me, sobbing, “is my Dad evil?” I had to say “no” because the Anselm I knew was not evil.
‘I didn’t think he was capable of that. I had to try to get Josh to differentiate between the man and the crime. But I couldn’t reach Josh. He couldn’t escape his surname. When he got into trouble the police would ask, “where’s your dad, Josh?” and it would make him worse. I was terrified he was going to hurt someone.’
At one point, Josh was convicted of assault and spent six weeks in a young offenders’ unit, before his sentence was overturned. ‘It was a case of mistaken identity,’ says Alison. ‘But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He got a glimpse of prison life and decided he didn’t want it. from then, he started to turn his life around.’
By 2013, Joshua was a changed person, she says. He had channelled his energies into the music scene and was making a name for himself as a grime artist and DJ.
In September of that year, however, tragedy struck. In an unrelated attack, Joshua himself fell victim to gang violence and was stabbed after attending a memorial service for yet another friend who had been murdered. He died in his mother’s arms in hospital.
Alison has chosen to deal with