Military tactics helped catch robbers

By Peter Wilson BBC West Midlands Home Affairs Correspondent

Fairfield. A pleasant name for a village which is not more than a strip of road.

It has a school, a church, a pub and a thriving post office and village store.

Craig Hodson-Walker was killed as he defended his parents during the raid

But this rural retreat awoke on 9 January to find that armed police had sealed the village off after a fatal shooting at the post office.

It was more like big city crime - guns and gangs had shattered this part of Worcestershire.

Jan Johnson is a friend of Judy and Ken Hodson-Walker, who run the post office and village store.

That morning, she ran to comfort Mrs Hodson-Walker as news broke her 29-year-old son, Craig, had been shot inside the shop.

"Judy screamed: 'They've killed my baby'. I grabbed hold of her and held her," she said.

"It was deathly quiet and it was just surreal to find out that that sort of thing could happen in our village."

Craig Hodson-Walker was shot through the heart while defending his father and mother with a cricket bat.

We are being targeted - we are worried and we need help and support Jas Singh Purewal Romsley sub-postmaster

Anselm Ribera, 34, Christopher Morrissey, 32, and his brother Declan, 33, all denied his murder but were all convicted of the killing at Birmingham Crown Court.

The men, all from the West Midlands, also denied the attempted murder of Craig's father, who was shot in the leg. Again, the jury found all three guilty of the charge.

A fourth man, Adrian Snape, was cleared of both charges.

Snape, of Camelot Way, Small Heath, Birmingham, had previously pleaded guilty to attempted robbery, admitting he was the getaway driver.

Cash seized

The Hodson-Walker family were hard-working people, whose business was serving their community.

The investigation into the failed robbery was one of the largest ever carried out by West Mercia Police, thought to have cost in the region of £2m.

Villagers rally after shooting

Ribera, from Druids Heath, Birmingham, was the gunman.

In 2002, he was jailed for six years for a robbery at a post office in Kings Norton, Birmingham.

Christopher Morrissey, of Elmay Road, Sheldon, Birmingham, had previously been convicted of three counts of robbery during the late-1990s.

Two of the raids were at post offices and a third involved cash being seized from a security van.

But even while the men planned the Fairfield raid at Ribera's flat, CCTV was capturing their meetings and tracking their movements.

The analysis of the CCTV images was carried out by former RAF military men trained in interpreting satellite and surveillance images.

They now work for a private company, LGC Forensics, helping the police to apprehend organised criminal gangs.

Clive Burchett worked on the post office case.

"We can track people through a route across the country thanks to cell phone analysis and you can then tie that in with CCTV moving images," he said.

Villagers offered their support after Mrs Hodson-Walker's son was murdered

"It aids in putting somebody at a location and then confirming that person is the same as the one in the dock."

In recent years, some armed gangs have left the big cities to hit so-called soft rural targets like Fairfield.

It seems as though almost every local post office in North Worcestershire has fallen prey to the city-based gangs.

Jag Singh Purewal is the sub-postmaster at Romsley, just a few miles from Fairfield. A year before the shooting his store was also raided by men armed with machetes.

He said more still needed to be done to help rural post offices.

"We are being targeted," he said.

"We are worried and we need help and support.

"We had a raid in March 2008 and I do feel more can be done for post offices like ourselves."

Detectives could question the men convicted over the Fairfield robbery about other unsolved raids.

But for now a village will be quietly remembering the bravery of one young man.

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version