Source: Associated Press
SEASCALE, England — A taxi driver went on a shooting spree across a rural area of northwestern England on Wednesday, police said, killing 12 people and wounding 25 others before turning the gun on himself.
The rampage in Cumbria was the deadliest mass shooting since 1996 in Britain, where gun ownership is tightly restricted and handguns are banned.
The deadly spree “has shocked the people of Cumbria and around the country to the core,” Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said.
Officers found Bird’s body in woods near the Lake District village of Boot. Hyde said two weapons were recovered from the scene.
The shootings occurred in the town of Whitehaven and nearby Seascale and Egremont, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) northwest of London. The area is popular with hikers and vacationers.
Health service spokesman Nigel Calvert said three of the injured were in a critical condition in the hospital.
Hyde said there were 30 separate crime scenes. Witnesses described seeing the gunman driving around shooting out the window of his car. His victims included a woman on a bicycle, a farmer in his field and at least two fellow taxi drivers.
Barrie Walker, a doctor in Seascale who certified one of the deaths, told the BBC that victims had been shot in the face, apparently with a shotgun.
Witness Alan Hannah told the Whitehaven News that he saw a man with a shotgun in a car near a taxi stand in Whitehaven. Photos showed a body, covered in a sheet, lying in a street in the town.
“This kind of thing doesn’t happen in our part of the world,” local lawmaker Jamie Reed told the BBC. “We have got one of the lowest, if not the lowest, crime rates in the country.”
Multiple shootings in Britain are rare. In 1987, gun enthusiast Michael Ryan killed 16 people in the English town of Hungerford. In 1996, Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher at a kindergarten in Dunblane, Scotland.
Glenda Pears, who runs L&G Taxis in Whitehaven, said one of the victims was another taxi driver who was a friend of Bird’s.
“They used to stand together having a (laugh) on the rank,” she said. “He was friends with everybody and used to stand and joke on Duke Street.”
Sue Matthews, who works at A2B Taxis in Whitehaven, said Bird was self-employed, quiet and lived alone.
“I would say he was fairly popular. I would see him once a week out and about. He was known as ‘Birdy,’” she said.
“I can’t believe he would do that — he was a quiet little fellow.”
Associated Press Writers Jill Lawless and Andrew Khouri in London contributed to this report.
More on shootings from:Guardian.co.uk
Neighbours and passing friends remember Derrick Bird as a friendly, even-tempered man; the kind of neighbour with a ready smile, who would also stop for a chat. Their shock at his unprovoked shooting spree is resounding.
Ryan Dempsey, a neighbour, had known Bird since he was 10. “He was a very easygoing sort of fellow; never walked past without saying hello. The last time I saw him was last night or the night before, and he was just as happy as before. He waved through the window, nodded and smiled, and the next thing I hear is this tragedy.”
Bird had a very good reason to be an apparently happy man: he had just become a grandfather. Last week, his son Graeme and his wife, Victoria, who lived only a few miles from Bird’s ill-kempt and shabby cottage, had a son.
It is believed they named him Leighton Joe. But today, the curtains in their home were tightly drawn. On the sitting room window sill was a row of greetings cards crammed tightly together. Their neighbours, alerted to the day’s shocking events, were unwilling to talk. “I have no information,” said a young woman next door.
The couple had retreated to Graeme’s mother’s home in the bucolic village of Lamplugh, just a few miles away, which is a rambling collection of farms, pubs and idyllic country homes surrounded by pastures and hedgerows plump with spring flowers. Lamplugh is also home to Bird’s brothers, David, who was one of his victims, and Bryan.
At the gate of the housing association home where Bird’s former partner, Linda Mills, lives, a young police woman stood guard. She politely told reporters that no one inside was prepared to talk to the media. A family liaison officer was on their way.
While his son’s and ex-partner’s homes are smart, carefully tended and welcoming family homes, Bird’s own cottage in the village of Rowrah has the air of neglect and loneliness. Rowrah is a small place, one of a string of hamlets and villages, mostly home to people who commute to Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant down the coast or to Whitehaven and Workington.
Bird’s home is one of 13 small two-up-two-down pebble-dashed cottages in a tight row opening out onto the street. Its paint and plasterwork are peeling and stained; a dusty upstairs bedroom window is paint-splattered. A rusting satellite dish leans upwards from under the eaves. The downstairs curtains were tightly drawn, but on the window sill were lawyers’ letters and one from the Criminal Injuries Compensation board.
There were strong rumours reported in Whitehaven that Bird, known to locals as “Birdy” had had feuds with other taxi drivers and was known to the police. But for many who knew him, Bird was “very placid” and well known on the Whitehaven taxi ranks.
One man who knew him told BBC Radio 4 he appeared to be a mild-mannered, content individual: “I can’t see how this piece [the murder spree] fits into his jigsaw. It’s just completely out of place.”
Dempsey, 26, who works for a power company, had first met Bird when Dempsey’s parents bought their cottage two doors away 15 years ago. He knew him as a child and six months ago had taken over the property.
Dempsey never saw Bird – a man reputed locally to be keen on railways – with guns or heard him talk about an interest in shooting or any membership of a shooting club. “I wasn’t aware of it; I didn’t see him with a firearm,” he said.
But in this rural area with its gamekeepers and farmers, he said, shotgun ownership was common. He had heard that Bird had used a shotgun on his victims. But then many gun owners tend to keep their firearms out of sight.
“I can’t remember seeing him with a firearm, no. Like I say, my dad is a gamekeeper and my dad doesn’t like people openly seeing him with a firearm. It just puts people off.”
