Chronicle reporter witnessed rampage

ALBERT Dryden may have been hailed as a misunderstood, antiestablishment figure by some – but not by those who saw him kill a man in cold blood.

The infamous murderer who shot dead council planning officer Harry Collinson in 1991 died on Saturday aged 77.

In full sight of the journalists and camera crews who had gathered to see the end of a stand-off over an illegally constructed bungalow, Dryden drew his gun and shot his victim at point blank range.

He then went on a rampage, blasting Stephen Campbell in the buttock and BBC Look North reporter Tony Belmont in the arm.

One of the reporters left fleeing from the crazed gunman was then-Chronicle reporter Garry Willey.

Today we share his account of what happened on that day.

Ican still see the dead, distant look in Albert Dryden’s eyes just moments before he aimed his pistol, tightened his arm, and pulled the trigger.

I know the moment things changed, when Dryden, enjoying the attention of the media, and his supporters who had arrived in numbers to back him, realised for the first time his celebrated, eccentric underground home was going.

His humour disappeared, he told planner Harry Collinson he was making a terrible mistake, and walked away. That’s when the fear, for me, kicked in. It just felt very bad, very suddenly. I saw Dryden emerge from a caravan calmly bending to tie the wire of a holster to his leg. It seemed unreal. It still does. He walked straight past me, blank and silent, to the fence where Mr Collinson was supervising the demolition crew. A colleague asked what he was doing. There was no response. When the first shot went off and Mr Collinson stumbled backwards, part of me was ready to believe the bullet was a blank. When the shots kept coming, when the panicked run through high wet grass made it all too real, I rang my newsdesk, filed a report, which to this day I can’t even begin to remember, and then rang my dad. It was only when he arrived that I lost it. I lost it again that night when I saw my fourmonth-old baby son. People asked me what it was like to see a man shot dead. Believe me, it’s the stuff of nightmares.