30 years ago tomorrow

[T.C]

The first and possibly the worst masacre ever to occur in this country took place in Hungerford.

19th of August 1987 and Michael Ryan went on the rampage shooting anyoneand everyone at random, including my colleague and friend Roger Brereton, a fellow traffic cop working out of the Newbury office of Southern Traffic Area (STA) of Thames Vally, and responded to the orignal call because having served at Hungerford, he knew the area and had the equipment to get him there quickly to support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre

I along with my fellow traffic cop colleagues were called down from both Readng and Taplow (the other 2 STA bases) and what we saw I can still remember vividly as if it was yesterday.

Inall my years in the service and all the fatal crashes and dead bodies I dealt with, Hungerford was the only incident that had what I would describe as a profound affect on me.

Anyway, I raise my glass to Roger and everyone else that lost their life that day.

 

[Quiney]

My father was in Lancashire police. After a few years in the merchant navy I was considering joining the police. It was at that time that a police officer was shot during a robbery in Blackpool. An event unheard of and made me stay at sea!

 

[T.C]

This was Rogers car. (we had personal issue back in those days) There were something like 40 points of entry and 20 points of exit.

It wasn't just all the bullet holes, but you can imagine the mess inside as well.

Anyway, the insurance company wanted to put it back into service.

Newbury refused to have it back, so the insurers said it could go to Reading. We said No way, so then Taplow were told they could have it.

Anyway, they tried every base in Thames Valley (bear in mind we all knoew each other across the 3 counties so word soon spread) and eventually it got to Newport Pagnell.

One of the crews said, "No problem, bring it here and we will use it, and the first time it goes out on the road, it will be put straight into a bridge on the Motorway!"

Surprisingly, we never saw that car again

 

[Quiney]

Excellent write-up about it on BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/hungerford_massacre

 

[T.C]

Excellent write-up about it on BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/hungerford_massacre

Thank you for that, it is a very good account.

What they don't mention is that when Ryan was holed up, journalists were told to keep out of the way, but they went nosing around and nearly got theor own heads blown off,

 

[andyBeaker]

Thank you for that, it is a very good account.

What they don't mention is that when Ryan was holed up, journalists were told to keep out of the way, but they went nosing around and nearly got theor own heads blown off,

Probably the same journalists who published the fact that Kenny Noyes was being hunted for the murder of Stephen Cameron despite being briefed by plod and asked to suppress the information until the were told it could be made public.

 

[T.C]

Probably the same journalists who published the fact that Kenny Noyes was being hunted for the murder of Stephen Cameron despite being briefed by plod and asked to suppress the information until the were told it could be made public.

Trouble was, it was multiple journalists. They just got in the way because they felt that they had a right to go where and when they wanted as they had a duty to report the news regardless of the risk to the public or my colleagues.

But, wouldn't surprise me if he was one of them