Inner-city gun crime in gangland Britain

Tony Thompson:

Safural Blake took a long sip of her drink and decided it would definitely be her last. It was just after 4am on 2 January 2003 and the New Year's party she had been enjoying for the past few hours at the Uniseven hair salon in Aston, Birmingham, was beginning to turn sour.

It had started out as a small, private event organised by the salon owner, but details of the venue had been broadcast on a pirate radio station. Since then, a large group of young black males had begun congregating in the back room and as the night wore on they were becoming increasingly rowdy.

Safural tried to make her way to the exit, but found her route blocked. 'There was a surge of people coming towards me. I assumed there was a fight. I finally got outside and I saw three girls in fur coats lying on the floor. I thought they were playing around. Two were lying sideways and one was lying at the bottom of them. The first two were still, but the third girl was moving. And then she started screaming.'

Terrified, and desperate to get away, Safural ran off in search of her car, only to find the windows smashed and the seats covered in broken glass. The car was riddled with bullet holes. Behind her, back where the girls lay on the ground, she heard someone shout: 'They are dead, they are dead.'

Last month, four men were convicted of taking part in the drive-by shooting that claimed the lives of 18-year-old Charlene Ellis and her 17-year-old cousin Letisha Shakespeare. Charlene's twin sister, Sophie, and her other cousin Cheryl Shaw were also hit, but survived. Marcus Ellis, 24, Michael Gregory, 23, and Nathan Martin, 26, will each serve at least 35 years. Rodrigo Simms, 20, who played a lesser role in the attack, will not be eligible for parole until he has served at least 27 years.

The double murder brought the issue of gun crime and gang violence into sharp focus across the country. Until then, the majority of incidents had involved gang members killing one another. That four innocent girls could find themselves falling victim to the worst kind of random violence was a wake-up call no one could ignore.

The truth, however, is a little more complex. Although the girls were indeed innocents, they were not shot entirely by accident. That night, a fundamental shift had taken place in the Birmingham underworld - women had become legitimate targets in the on-going turf war between its two main rival gangs.

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