Welsh suspect may have been spotted near West End flat
● Police deny that former boxer killed over missing drugs as CCTV reviewed
The prime suspect in the murder of Bradley Welsh may have been spotted near his victim’s home up to a week before carrying out the gangland hit, it has been claimed.
Police sources have refused to deny newspaper reports that a man matching the description of the 48-yearold’s killer had been spotted near the scene of last Wednesday night’s shooting.
A neighbour claimed he saw the man described by detectives in the former boxer’s West End street two weeks ago.
Mr Welsh, who had close associates in Edinburgh’s underworld, was gunned down outside his £500,000 basement flat on Chester Street at 8pm on Wednesday.
The neighbour said he saw a man matching the Police Scotland description of the killer lurking nearby.
He told a national newspaper: “He was a young man standing there on his own looking up and down the street very intently as if he was checking something out.
“When he saw me looking at him, he just walked off. I did not think anything of it at the time, but I wonder now if he was casing Bradley’s house.”
Police said the suspect is aged 20 to 30, 5ft 10in to 6ft tall, slim and with a tanned complexion. He fired once at Mr Welsh, possibly using a sawnoff shotgun, inflicting fatal head wounds.
Mr Welsh, who was jailed for
running a protection racket and assaulting a woman, had a young daughter and a stepson. He ran Holyrood Boxing Gym and was involved in a number of charities, earning him praise for turning his life around after his criminal past.
In the 1980s, Mr Welsh was involved in the Hibs football gang Capital City Service. Fans at Easter Road yesterday held a minute’s applause in his memory.
He was jailed in 1990 for menacing an estate agent, but turned to boxing after his release and in 1993 was crowned British ABA lightweight boxing champ. His career ended when he was jailed again, for four months, for assaulting a woman in her own home.
Meanwhile, police have denied suggestions Mr Welsh died because of a missing £130,000 drugs consignment he was paid to protect. They have also not ruled out a link to Somali gangs dealing crack cocaine in Edinburgh and elsewhere in Scotland.
Officers are still trawling CCTV in an attempt to identify the gunman, the route he used to and from the shooting scene, and if he was driven away by an accomplice parked in a nearby street.