Four men jailed over Euston church funeral drive-by shooting that left two with life-changing injuries
A seven-year-old girl was left with a metal pellet embedded in a muscle near her heart, which will affect her health for the rest of her life.
Friday 12 April 2024 16:54, UK
Four men involved in a drive-by shooting of four women and two girls as they left a funeral service have been jailed.
Tyrell Lacroix, 23, Jashy Perch, 20, Jordan Walters, 24, and Alrico Nelson-Martin, 20, were involved in the gang attack outside a church that left a girl and a woman with life-changing injuries.
The victims - aged between seven and 54 - were struck with pellets from a sawn-off shotgun fired into a crowd outside a funeral at St Aloysius Church in Euston, north London, in January last year.
The seven-year-old girl was left with a metal pellet embedded in a muscle near her heart, which will affect her health for the rest of her life, and a woman suffered serious injuries hampering her hearing and balance.
In a victim impact statement, the girl's mother said she had asked her: "Mummy, why has this happened to me?"
"She felt like she had done something wrong and could not understand why," said the mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, adding her girl's innocence has been "taken away".
The planning of the attack began in November 2022 when Lacroix found the black Toyota used to circle the church ahead of the shooting, according to Scotland Yard.
Lacroix, of St John's Wood, was part of a gang in north London and believed members of a rival gang would be at the memorial service.
Sentencing, Judge Mark Bryant-Heron QC told Lacroix he was "set on revenge" after he was stabbed by a rival gang member a year before the shooting.
Police say they pieced together 2,000 hours of CCTV and tracked their five-mile getaway from the scene through north London, during which they drove on the wrong side of the road and jumped a red light.
Footage showed Walters, Lacroix and Perch in the car, detectives said, before one of them opened fire into the crowd.
Nelson-Martin supplied the sawn-off shotgun to those who were in the vehicle at the time of the shooting on 14 January 2023.
At sentencing at Kingston Crown Court on Friday:
• Lacroix was jailed for 26 years for conspiracy to wound with intent to cause serious harm;
• Walters was jailed for 13 years for the same offence;
• Perch was sentenced to 20 years in jail for conspiracy to wound with intent to cause serious harm, for having an offensive weapon, and for possession of cannabis;
• Nelson-Martin was jailed for 14 years for conspiracy to wound and possession of a shotgun with intent to endanger life.
The victims had been at a memorial service for Sara Sanchez, 20, and her mother, 50-year-old Fresia Calderon, who died in November 2022.
Ms Sanchez had suffered from leukaemia for three years, while her mother died suddenly from a rare blood clot on arrival at Heathrow Airport from Colombia.
Mourners had turned to look at doves being released from the church steps as the gunshots rang out.
'Unimaginable fear and horror'
Queen Macaulay said she was visiting a friend in the area when she heard a gunshot and saw people running.
"Everyone was running... it was quite chaotic," she told Paste BN.
"We heard people screaming and saying 'oh my god'... I was thinking oh my god what's going on, let's get to safety."
Detective inspector Darren Jones described the four men as "dangerous", bringing "unimaginable fear and horror to the streets of London".
He said he hopes the sentencing brings the victims a "small measure of comfort and closure".
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