Derrick Bird shooting: taxi driver was convinced the world had turned against him
In the days before he embarked on his bloody massacre on the West Cumbria coast, Derrick Bird was convinced that the world had turned against him.
He believed, wrongly, that his twin brother David and the family's solicitor were conspiring to send him to prison for tax evasion.
Three days before he embarked on the killings he bombarded his brother with 44 separate phone calls. Only two were answered; the rest rang out, fuelling his deep sense of paranoia and anger.
Shortly after midnight on June 2nd, Bird set out from his house in Rowrah intent on revenge. He armed himself a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun and a .22 rifle, complete with a silencer and telescopic sight.
He entered his his brother’s farm in Frizlington, Cumbria, where David was half dressed in bed. He proceeded to shoot him at least 11 times with the .22 rifle, including two shots which were fired into victim’s head and another into the centre of his back.
Together they provided a portend of the brutal and cowardly way his brother would carry out his deadly rampage that day.
Five hours later Bird was laying in wait for his second victim, Kevin Commons, his solicitor who in his mind a co-conspirator in the “plot” to ruin him.
Bird had been due to meet with his twin brother and Commons that day to discuss his problems with HMRC. Bird was convinced that he would be jailed immediately after the meeting.
Shortly after 10am Common’s drove down the track on his way to work.
Bird shot at his car twice with a shotgun, injuring Commons’s shoulder. Terrified and bleeding, the solicitor scrambled out of the vehicle and began stumbling towards home. Bird followed. He executed his victim with two .22 bullets to the head.
Bird’s killing spree was only just beginning. He drove to the home of a friend to whom he had sold a more modern, more accurate and ultimately more deadly shotgun the night before.
Mercifully, the friend, Neil Jacques, was not at home and his wife, Carol, refused to show him where it was. Had she not done so, police fear, the death toll could have been even higher.
Unperturbed, the killer drove into Whitehaven to seek out some of the taxi drivers who had ridiculed him over his personal hygiene and the state of his taxi.
He reached the end of the taxi rank in Duke Street at 10.27am. Darren Rewcastle, 43, his erstwhile friend, was returning from a sandwich shop when Bird called him over.
In a modus operandi he would repeat time and time again over the next 90 minutes, he beckoned him over to the front passenger window of his Citroen Picasso. Mr Rewcastle was greeted by a shotgun blast to the face and a second to his abdomen. He died in the street where he fell.
A minute later Bird was at the front of the rank, pointing his .22 rifle at another taxi driver, Donald Reid. He turned to take cover but was caught by a single bullet in the back. When he began crawling along the street – an image captured on CCTV - Bird got out of his car and followed at him, leveling his rifle as he went.
He was about to shoot once more when another driver shouted at him to stop. Inexplicably, Bird did so and returned to his car. He had been out of the vehicle for 24 seconds. It was 10.30am.
As the 55-plate Citroen headed out through the one-way street, PC Nick Taylor commandeered a passer-by’s car and began to shadow him. Less than a minute later two other police officers, PCs James Fitch and Leesa Edwards, joined the pursuit in a marked Transit van.
They were closing in on Bird as he shot at his next victim. Terence Kennedy, another taxi driver, was heading in the opposite direction when the killer recognised him.
As the two cars drew level Bird smiled, pointed the shotgun towards him and opened fire. Mr Kennedy suffered such severe injuries that his lower arm was later amputated. His passenger, Emma Purcival, was sprayed by shotgun pellets.
Bird’s apparent attempt to come back and finish the “execution” was thwarted by the presence of the police van. He pointed his weapon at the two officers inside and both ducked for cover. When they looked up again they saw him driving away at speed.
Susan Hughes, 57, was carrying her shopping through Egremont when Bird drew up alongside. He shot her twice before getting out of his car, wrestling with her, and completing the execution with a shot to the side of her head.
At 10.53am the killer re-loaded and drove to nearby Bridge End. He pulled over to the off-side to draw level with Kenneth Fishburn, 71, before shooting him dead with shots to the neck and head.
Over the next few minutes four people survived Bird’s onslaught.
One of these, Ashleigh Glaister, 15, had been beckoned over, but saw the killer’s gun in time to duck down and then run for her life. She had dodged two bullets by the time Bird drove off.
Isaac Dixon was the sixth to die at Bird’s hand, suffering two fatal gunshot wounds as he checked mole traps along a country lane near Haile.
From there the murder trail moved to Wilton, with Bird, an occasional diver with the Solway sub-aqua club, apparently trying to target Jason Kirby, one of the committee members he felt had crossed him.
As he entered the village he had passed Jennifer Jackson, 68, a mother-of-two, as she went to meet her husband, James, 67, who had been for a walk. By the time he began reversing away from Mr Kirby’s house she had caught him up. Bird shot her dead with bullets to the chest and head.
Mr Jackson heard the shots and rushed to her aid. Bird saw him coming and shot him in the head through the driver’s window. Christine Hunter-Hall, a friend he had been talking to, was also shot but survived despite suffering a collapsed lung.
Garry Purdham, 31, a well-known local rugby player, was shot dead as he worked in a gateway at his family’s farm. Bird pulled in, shot him twice in the chest and arm, and then got out of the car with his rifle in his hand.
He stood over the injured man before shooting him dead with two .22 rounds.
Jamie Clark, an estate agent who at 23 was the youngest of the victims, is thought to have been shot dead after Bird spotted him at the side of the road in his Smart car. He fired a single shot that struck the right side of his victim’s head.
Ironically, Mr Clark had been taking a call from a colleague warning him that a gunman was on the loose and that he should leave the area.
Mr Clark’s engine was still running and in his final moments an involuntary action appears to have propelled his car into a hedge and onto its side.
By 11.27am Bird was in Seascale. He had an altercation with Harry Berger, a publican, in the single-lane track beneath a bridge, and shot at him as he went past. Mr Berger survived only because he instinctively shielded his face with his hands. He nevertheless suffered severe damage to one arm.
Bird re-loaded and headed onto the coast road. As he joined it, he could see Michael Pike, 64, toiling up the hill on his regular bike ride. He drew alongside and fired too shots. The first one missed, the second slammed into the side of his neck. He was found slumped over his bike.
Two hundred yards on Bird claimed his last innocent victim. It was the most brutal of his executions.
Jane Robinson, 66, was delivering Bettaware catalogues when the killer called her over. Tests carried out on her body reveal that Bird’s shotgun was actually in contact with her mouth when he opened fire.
Cumbria Police finally caught up with Bird shortly after 11.35am, when two officers in an armed response vehicle spotted the Picasso heading towards them near Holmrook. They turned round but then got held up in temporary road works. Bird had vanished.
The killer took a circuitous route to the Eskdale Valley, occasionally doubling up. At 11.50am he shot Fiona Moretta, a holidaymaker, as she walked along the roadside near Boot, and a few moments later opened fire on staff at a travel company.
Close to Dalegarth Station Christine Alty survived another execution attempt after being beckoned over to Bird’s car. The shot missed her but she remembers “a sudden loud bang and a whoosh of air” past her face.
At 11.57am Samantha Christie and her boyfriend, Craig Ross, pulled over so she could take a photograph. As Bird drove by he asked: “Are you having a nice day?” Before she could reply he opened fire, inflicting multiple injuries to her jaw, palate and eye socked.
Mr Ross began running to her aid, but stopped when Bird ordered him to get back into the couple’s car and drive away. As he did so, the killer fired a parting shot that shattered his rear screen.
Armed response vehicles were finally beginning to close in when Bird’s front offside tyre, by now shredded from repeated collisions with cars and dry-stone walls, fell away from the wheel.
He got out of his taxi for the last time, warning yet another set of passers-by not to approach him. In the bright sunshine he set off towards Low Birker Farm, leaving behind the shotgun but taking with him his .22 rifle.
As he walked, he unscrewed the weapon’s silencer, apparently realising that this would make it easier to deliver a self-inflicted injury.
In a wooded copse he knelt down, placed the rifle barrel to his forehead and fired a single round. The bullet killed him instantly.
His rampage was over.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/
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