At 10.33am on Wednesday 2nd June, police received a call stating that a man had pulled up next to a town centre taxi rank, stepped out of his car and shot a man.

Derrick Bird had just shot fellow taxi driver Darren Rewcastle. He had already shot dead his twin brother, David Bird and local solicitor Kevin Commons at their homes in west Cumbria. He went on to kill a total of 12 innocent local people and injure a further 11, some of them critically, before shooting and killing himself in a remote woodland in the Lake District.

This sparked the single largest policing operation and investigation in Cumbria’s history.

Links to news articles:

Whitehaven Shooting Incident - 2 June

Whitehaven Shooting Incident - 4 June to 23 June - 2010 

Findings of Firearms Licensing Review Published - November 2010