Black women are being murdered across Britain as gangland criminals adopt callous Mafia tactics

The Observer:

There were more than 100 people at the party, yet no one saw it happen. One minute Natasha Derby was dancing alongside a friend, the next she was bleeding to death on the floor, shot in the head at close range. Dwane Haughton, 29, was acquitted earlier this month of 23-year-old Natasha's murder. The Jamaican had pleaded guilty at Reading Crown Court in Berkshire to handling the bullet that killed her - his fingerprint was on a cartridge case found at the scene - but he denied pulling the trigger.

The week Haughton was cleared, three other women were shot, two fatally. Sisters Connie and Lorna Morrison were tied up in their flat in Harlesden, north-west London, and shot in the head at point-blank range. Their mother's boyfriend, Noel Patterson, 62, was killed, but Lorna's nine-month-old son was spared.

The shootings are part of a brutal trend. An investigation by The Observer has found that black women are almost 50 times more likely than white women to be victims of gun crime. Although women make up less than 2 per cent of gunshot cases, 95 per cent of female victims are black. This includes women deliberately targeted by gunmen as well as bystanders.

Experts say they are victims of a black gang culture that no longer sees women or children as beyond limits. Mafia-style tactics which call for every witness to a crime to be executed have been adopted with relish.

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