Derrick Bird killing spree ‘began with row over a will’

Yesterday's killing spree by the 52-year-old Cumbrian taxi driver Derrick Bird, who killed 12 people before turning his gun on himself, was the worst massacre in Britain since the Dunblane primary school killings of 1996. Overnight reports suggest Bird's rampage may have started because of a family row.

It is thought that Bird, a taxi driver who lived in the hamlet of Rowrah,
near Whitehaven, was involved in a row over his mother's will. Mary Bird is 90 and is understood to be seriously ill.

On Tuesday night he had a conversation with a fellow taxi driver which ended with him saying: "You won't see me again."

Hours before he attracted any attention on Wednesday morning by shooting dead a cab driver in Whitehaven, he shot his twin brother David in his bed and killed the family's solicitor, Kevin Commons. Some reports say he made an appointment for Commons, 60, to visit him at his home, where he lay in wait.

The main wave of killings then began in Whitehaven when he drove up to the cab rank in Duke Street at 10.30 am, armed with two weapons - a .22 hunting rifle with telescopic sights and a shotgun - and shot dead his fellow taxi driver Darren Rewcastle.

Don Reed, another taxi driver, tells what happened: "I looked up and I saw Derrick Bird's taxi pull up at the back end of the taxi rank.

"The next thing was he shouted Darren Rewcastle and he walked in the middle of the road, and then he just opened up with a single barrelled shotgun with a telescopic sight on it.

"He then drove up by me and just pointed it at me, and I just took a flying dive and he caught me in the back. I went on the floor and then I crawled along the taxi rank.

"I was going to apply first aid to Darren, but when I saw Darren, he was gone.

"I crawled round and Derrick Bird was walking towards me with this shotgun."

Still crawling, Bird reached up and opened the car doors to get some protection from the shotgun blasts. The episode came to an end when another driver shouted at Bird and he suddenly got back in his car and drove off, shooting another man in the face as he left.

Reed was one of the 25 wounded but not killed during the shooting spree. He escaped with a back injury. Two of the wounded were still in critical condition on Thursday morning.

The killing of Rewcastle has brought reports of a further simmering row in Bird's life. There are suggestions that he was angry with Rewcastle and other drivers, accusing them of breaking cab rank etiquette and touting for fares.

However, by Thursday morning police were still unable to substantiate either the cab rank row or the rumoured inheritance squabble.

From Duke Street, Bird headed off through west Cumbria, apparently killing at random before crashing his car in the hamlet of Boot and then shooting himself.

His victims included a farmer's son from Gosforth, Garry Purdham, a 57-year-old mother of two, Susan Hughes, and a retired security worker from the nearby Sellafield nuclear site, Kenneth Fishburn, who was out walking his dog. Sellafield had to be locked down during the three-hour killing spree.

It appears from reports that some victims died when he stopped his car and beckoned them over. Others were working by the roadside, or happened to be walking or bicycling by.

One of those he shot at and missed was Ashley Gaytor who told ITN that Bird pulled up beside her and pointed a gun at her. She said: "I held my ears and ducked down to protect myself and the gunshot was fired. I felt it go past my ponytail on the back of my hair."

Bird, who was divorced some time ago and recently became a grandfather, was described by locals as a quiet man. Muriel Gilpin, the postmistress at Arlecdon, told reporters that he was "a very difficult man to drag a conversation out of".

BRITAIN'S PREVIOUS SHOOTING SPREESDunblane, 1996: Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a
teacher when he entered the gym of Dunblane primary school in Stirlingshire armed with two pistols and two revolvers and opened fire on the pupils. Tennis player Andy Murray was among the survivors, and has told of hiding under a desk to avoid the bullets. Hamilton shot himself after firing more than 100 rounds at the five and six-year-olds.

Hungerford, 1987: Michael Ryan killed 14 people in the
Berkshire town of Hungerford after arming himself with an automatic rifle, a pistol and a hand grenade. He ended up barricading himself inside the local technology college, from where he told police negotiators before shooting himself: "I wish I had stayed in bed". The killings led to the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, which banned the ownership of semi-automatic centre-fire rifles. ·