‘Little girls were playing in their princess dresses’
BEHIND-THE-SCENES DOCUMENTARY SHOWS GREATER MANCHESTER POLICE BRINGING SERIOUS CRIME GANGS TO JUSTICE
IT was one of the thankfully rare moments when the ruthless violence of organised crime spills over into everyday life.
During a heatwave in the summer of 2018 three balaclava-clad gunmen ambushed dad-of-two Luke Graham outside a house in Ashtonunder-Lyne and shot him dead.
Nearby little girls in princess dresses were playing in the street enjoying the sunshine.
Graham, a small-time drug dealer not long out of prison, had, in the words of Det Chief Insp Liz Hopkinson, stepped on the wrong toes.
Alongside an associate and former prison-mate, Graham, nicknamed ‘Tank,’ was selling drugs in the area, undercutting the prices of the more established gangs on the patch.
That foolish decision sparked a turf war which had deadly consequences.
CCTV footage of Graham’s murder is set to be shown during a shocking BBC documentary looking at the work of GMP’s Major Incident Team in bringing down some of the city’s most dangerous criminal gangs.
Speaking ahead of the episode airing tonight, Det Chief Insp Liz Hopkinson told the M.E.N. how the murder and subsequent investigation unfolded.
She said: “They [Graham and his associate] stepped on the toes of an organised crime group. They were undercutting the cost of the drugs.
“They [Graham and his associate] were not an organised crime group – really they were an unknown quantity. The first we knew about it was when the murder occurred.”
Graham was killed instantly when he was shot in the shoulder as he sat in a Volkswagen Caddy van on Birch Street, having been lured there thinking he was carrying out a drug deal.
His associate was shot in the leg but managed to run away.
The shooting shocked the community, but sparked a deluge of information and intelligence.
Within a matter of hours police had the shooter Wade Cox’s name and a wanted appeal was circulated across Greater Manchester.
Cox is currently serving a life sentence for the murder, and will spend a minimum of 36 years behind bars.
Four other men were also jailed for their role in the brutal killing.
DCI Hopkinson described the murder as one of the few times gang violence ‘creeps over’ into the civilian life.
She said: “Very, very rarely does this kind of thing happen like this. So much organised crime occurs in the shadows away from most civilian life.
“They don’t want to crossover into our lives, and certainly don’t want to crossover into mine, because that gets attention.
“2018 was a very hot summer. There were little girls running around playing in their princess dresses.
“It’s just absolutely awful that there were children playing in the street while this happened.
“It was just one of those incidents which did creep over into that civilian side.
“Mainly organised criminals largely target people of a similar stature - they are not going after members of the public.
“But Wade Cox in particular wasn’t a complicated or intelligent character.
“He was really careless and he certainly wasn’t any kind of leader. He behaved in an uncontrolled way.
“And because of the time and date of this there was that potential for crossover.
“It is rare, but that’s why I think that his sentence was so high.
“We can’t allow this to happen and that’s why we put in so much resources to bring as many of the group to justice.”
● The Detectives: Fighting Organised Crime is on BBC2 at 9pm tonight.