Killer who ran down ex-Navy officer with his own car was set to make just £500 from theft
Moment murderer walks into pub hours after attack
‘Senseless waste of life’
A BURGLAR who killed a former Navy officer as he stole his £35,000 car had hoped to make just £500 from selling the vehicle.
Ryan Gibbons, 29, was found guilty of murder yesterday after running over Lieutenant Michael Samwell at least twice with the ex-submariner’s Audi S3.
Gibbons and three accomplices – two of whom are still at large – had hoped to sell the vehicle for just £2,000 between them.
Mr Samwell’s father David said the 35-year-old nuclear engineer had been the victim of ‘such a senseless crime’.
He said: ‘It was terrible and horrific that anyone could do that to another human being.’ The security consultant said his family wanted to see ‘justice done’ but added: ‘Whatever happens it won’t bring Mike back.’
A two-week trial heard Mr Samwell, who spent 12 years in the Navy, fell under the moving car driven by Gibbons as he tried to stop the theft.
Gibbons reversed, drove forwards over him, then sped away before crashing.
Mr Samwell’s wife Jessica had followed her husband out of their £500,000 home in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, at 3am on April 23. She told Manchester Crown Court she saw a wheel of the car crushing her husband’s chest, then held his hand and told him she loved him as she pleaded: ‘Stay with me Mike.’
Her husband suffered 39 injuries including head wounds and a lacerated heart.
Mrs Samwell, 34, wept and was hugged by family members after hearing the jury reject Gibbons’s claim that he did not realise he had driven over Mr Samwell.
Father-of-four Gibbons, a petty criminal with a history of burglary, and 21-year-old getaway driver Raymond Davies – both from Chorlton – are to be sentenced today.
Convicted drug dealer Davies had driven Gibbons and their accomplices – whom they have refused to identify – to the scene, where they smashed a glass door to grab the car keys.
He also picked up Gibbons after he crashed the stolen Audi, while the other two fled on foot.
Chilling footage has emerged showing the moment concretelayer Gibbons strolled into a pub in Withington, south Manchester, the day after the murder. He told the court he had visited the pub in an attempt to ‘act normal’.
After leaving the pub, he booked into a Jurys Inn hotel in Manches- ter with his girlfriend under a fake name. Mr Samwell’s widow and family attended every day of the trial, hearing what they called ‘excruciating’ evidence.
Last night they said the verdicts brought ‘a mixture of sadness and relief’ and described their pain at losing ‘the future that we will never get to see’, adding: ‘We are also saddened by the senseless waste of life that this event has wrought, not only Mike’s life but the lives of all of those connected to this awful act.’
They paid tribute to his ‘boundless energy and enthusiasm’, adding: ‘His outlook on life was always positive, even in the face of hard- ship and adversity. We can’t even begin to explain how much our Mike will be missed. To us he was, and forever will be, our hero.’ Mr Samwell had spent almost 12 years in the Royal Navy, following in the footsteps of a great grandfather, a decorated ship’s captain who took part in a daring raid to capture a German spy ship in the First World War. His service record included helping in the aftermath of an explosion on submarine HMS Tireless in 2007, in which two of his shipmates died. David Samwell said that his son had played ‘a role breaking into the compartment where the explo- sion took place’. ‘ He did his job very well and was very well regarded by his fellow submariners’, his father said. One of Mr Samwell’s former colleagues said: ‘Submariners court a different danger to the other branches of armed forces. The danger is ambient and constant, even in peacetime. Talking with old shipmates, it seems what is most difficult to bear is he had met those dangers head on, but was instead taken by a coward.’ After meeting his accountant wife through mutual friends, Mr Samwell transferred to a shorebased job so that he could spend more time with her, his father said. Lewis tragedy days, Detective but Hughes is no used other said: Chief too word often ‘The Inspector seems these word right to describe the utter devastation [Gibbons and Davies] left behind in their determination to steal from the Samwells.’ Davies admitted burglary before the trial and was found guilty of manslaughter and taking a vehicle without consent. Gibbons admitted burglary and aggravated vehicle taking, and was found guilty of murder. His girlfriend Stacey Hughes, 28, was cleared of assisting an offender by booking him into the Jurys Inn hotel.