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farmer shot at thieves van


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I think its a bit early to give a informed opinion yet. But i think the at some stage the police government ect are going to send out a message that shooting at fleeing buglers is not acceptable even if tempting. As for them driving at his mother we will have to wait and see.

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HAs that been confirmed?

 

Just re read the article it happen over August bank holiday weekend.

 

Mrs Smith was left with cuts and bruises after falling and scrambling up a mound of earth to escape the van in the attack over the August Bank Holiday weekend.

 

That has to be a fair case of "serious fear" Being driven at by a vehicle, interested if a clay load would puncture a tyre on a commercial.

Edited by HDAV
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I have no idea what the fact that he's an ex public schoolboy has to do with anything?

 

 

 

He looks like he needs some lessons with a good coach...his stance is appalling. :ermm:

 

God you lot are worse than a load of school girls for picking holes in people the guy is posing for a picture the guy has got spots on his face that is all irrelevant rubbish what the post is supposed to be about is was he justified in shooting at the bad guys who cares if he is wearing brown shoes or has a coat on that you do not like.

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As the father of the young man suspected of attempted murder, it might be helpful if I comment on the various points raised on this forum, as well as in the Daily Fail article.

 

It wasn’t actually scrap cable, it was far worse than that, it was cable cut from various machines, the cable was worth thousands in scrap, the damage to the machinery was far worse. And to add insult to injury, not only did the thieves damage and steal, they also fly tipped a load of building waste onto our land to make room for our property. Not that that makes any difference, the amount of damage and financial loss wasn’t known at the time.

 

 

End of the day we hold guns for sport and hunting not self defence, it will end up looking like all legal owners are prepared to use them for this reason and giving the government more excuse to ban them.

 

He fired because he absolutely had to. When there is a sudden and urgent need for self defence we need to use whatever tools we have to hand. In this case, he happened to have a shotgun over his shoulder.

 

I hope justice is done.

 

Slight snag is that his mother is heard on the 999 call telling him to shoot the tyres. He shoots the screen instead. I suspect that is why he has been arrested.

 

I am totally in the dark as to why his mother was arrested.

 

His mum knows nothing about guns, he ignored her suggestion that he shoot out the tyres for reasons that every reader of this forum should understand. No.5 shot would have just bounced off them, he would have had to shoot all 4, as there was no way of knowing whether it was a front or rear wheel drive transit, which was impossible, it wouldn’t have done any good until the van had been driven for whatever distance it took for the tyres to come off the rims, and there wasn’t time anyway. Nobody knows why his mum was arrested, I’m guessing that the police chose to interpret ‘shoot the tyres’ as an incitement to murder, who knows?

 

go for the radiator with a heavy load

 

He didn’t have a heavy load, he used what he had in his pocket and as above, it wouldn’t have saved his mother until the engine had been running long enough to overheat and seize up – she would have been dead long before then.

 

He looks like he needs some lessons with a good coach...his stance is appalling.

 

What does that have to do with anything? As it happens, that photo was of him shooting in a competition, which he won.

 

The CPS say in the article that he will not face charges but the police still have to investigate the initial incident, after all he has discharged a shotgun towards a vehicle / people causing damage.

 

3 weeks after the incident, the police still haven’t even interviewed him properly and neither the police nor the CPS has given any indication of whether or not they intend to charge him with anything.

 

gun doesn't look like a good fit either, his head is miles off the comb.

 

That’s probably because he was shooting my gun in the photo, he is a right hander, I’m a leftie. But he still won the competition, not that that has anything to do with anything.

 

According to the DM article, I am divorced from his mother – wrong, we are not divorced.

There were 2 thieves in the van – wrong, there was only one. The other one had run away

Bill fired at the driver side of the van – wrong. He fired at the passenger side

They said that he said he acted in desperation – wrong. He has said absolutely nothing to the press.

They said that his mother was dialing 999 – wrong. She had probably been speaking to the police for around 5 minutes when she was attacked.

They said that Bill and his mum were arrested by armed police who arrived 45 minutes later – wrong. The armed police arrived about 3 ¼ hours later, Bill and Louisa gave chase in Bill’s car, gave a running commentary to the police and as a direct result of this, after 5 miles or so the police forced the van to stop and arrested the driver. They also arrested Bill and Lousia, and as a token of their appreciation for helping them to catch the criminal, they also seized Bill’s car and charged him £150 to get it back when they had finished with it. They also failed to replace door panels etc that they had removed, tipped the contents of his glove box into the front footwell, turned his toolboxes upside down and so on.

 

What actually happened is that the first thief ran away, he was arrested later.

 

The second thief got into his van, Louisa and Bill thought he was leaving, but he changed direction and drove straight at both of them. Bill jumped clear, his mother was too slow and she went down. Bill ran over to her, the van reversed and then drove straight at her again, as fast as he could. At that point, Bill un-slung his shotgun, loaded and fired at the windscreen. He fired several shots, the van then reversed again and drove at her again, and Bill fired again. The van driver then stopped the attack so Bill stopped shooting.

 

If Bill had wanted to shoot him then he could easily have done so, but what he actually did was to shoot only at the van, to slow down or stop the attack on his mother. The police record all emergency calls so have the whole thing on record.

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Being driven at with his mum in imminent danger, he's shown more than enough self control in resisting the temptation of scoring a bullseye on the vermin's foreheads. The mother urging him to shoot the tyres won't hold against him as I doubt he'd have even heard the gun's report at the time.

 

Out of interest I personally wouldn't shoot bird shot at a tyre any more than a few feet away as I think the risk of ricochet would be high.

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GHE, You have my sympathy and support, I have had many similar experiences.

Living in a remote farm does not mean you are immune from visits by the lower form of life.

Sadly most of the townies on this forum cant see further than the end of their terraced street.

I sincerely hope your son and wife are not prosecuted, you will I know have all the help from

the farming community,

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Thank you for posting I hope the CPS and police see sense, the comments about the gun fit and stance were "tongue in cheek". IF the cable was worth tousands as scrap i dread to think what the replacement cost is like. Good on Bill for defending his mother and his property , I certainly hope they both fully recover with no long term effects and no charges are brought.

 

Why they need to search his car is beyond me, I also hope the licencing office don't get all uppity at renewal time

Edited by HDAV
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Thanks for your messages of support.

 

Whatever happens, I expect Bill to have problems with his S1 and S2 certificates, but we will fight them every inch of the way if we have to.

 

Right now, we are trying to get the various shotguns, rifles and ammo that were stored at home returned, as frankly we don't trust the police to keep them safe and to look after them properly. When they removed them, they didn't bother to put them into slips, they just put them into the back of one of their cars, complete with bolts and ammo, and then left the car unattended outside the house for hours.

 

Even getting them returned is a fiasco - there is no legal problem with the shotguns as I have plenty of storage at my W. Yorkshire home, and I also have plenty of storage capacity for the rifles, the N. Yorkshire police have told me that they are happy for me to have the rifles too, but my own licensing authority of W. Yorks won't let me have the rifles because they don't consider even temporary storage to be 'good reason' - so I have had to apply for a variation, the good reason being that as they won't let Bill have his rifles for fox and vermin control, I will have to do it for him.

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Thanks, we are both members and so far have only spoken to them about the actual incident - but although we assume that the police will want to rescind his certificates we don't know that yet, so there isn't really any point in taking that up with BASC yet.

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GHE please pass on my very best wishes to your son & his mother.

I have no idea why anyone believes anything they read in the papers and it is good to hear your account. Of course we have no way of knowing if you are who you say you are but the tone and wording of your post rings true to me.

I have no doubt that, despite some of the witty comments, the huge majority of the people on this forum support your son's actions. Living in a rural location surrounded by valuable equipment and a sizeable population of ne'er do wells I for one have played this sort of scenario through in my mind many times. If his actions and the publicity surrounding them make the scumbags think again about raiding farms and rural businesses in the future, then your son has done us all a great service.

I cannot speak for the whole membership but if there is any help we can give in helping his case then I suspect a request on this forum will be extremely well supported.

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GHE please pass on my very best wishes to your son & his mother.

I have no idea why anyone believes anything they read in the papers and it is good to hear your account. Of course we have no way of knowing if you are who you say you are but the tone and wording of your post rings true to me.

I have no doubt that, despite some of the witty comments, the huge majority of the people on this forum support your son's actions. Living in a rural location surrounded by valuable equipment and a sizeable population of ne'er do wells I for one have played this sort of scenario through in my mind many times. If his actions and the publicity surrounding them make the scumbags think again about raiding farms and rural businesses in the future, then your son has done us all a great service.

I cannot speak for the whole membership but if there is any help we can give in helping his case then I suspect a request on this forum will be extremely well supported.

I appreciate that you can't be sure that I'm who I say I am. My name is Garry Edwards, I post on other shooting forums as GHE and you may have seen me on both ITV Calendar and BBC look North yesterday, being interviewed about this. I'm fairly well known as an advertising & commercial photographer and post under my own name on this forum. If anyone sends me a private message I will happily provide them with my address and phone number. I'm sure that some members of this forum will know me personally and shoot with me, and will also know Bill.

Edited by GHE
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