Britain's first massacre (15 photos)

In the summer of 1987, one of the worst mass shootings took place in the small town of Hungerford (UK, Berkshire). At its core, the shooter had no idea, no specific goal, no requirements. He moved chaotically around the city, shooting at everyone who crossed his path.





August 19, 1987. Time 12:30. A young man comes to the forest 10 km from his own home and sees Susan Godfrey there, who has decided to have a picnic with her children. Four-year-old Hannah and two-year-old James, on the orders of an unknown person, got into the car with the help of their mother, and the man took Susan herself further into the forest, where he fired 13 bullets at her.

He left the crime scene in his car, and the terrified children were found by an elderly woman, to whom Hannah said: “Mrs. Rosie, the guy in the black coat killed our mother.”

The text lists all the names of the victims, out of respect for those who died.



Remains of the Ryans' house after the arson

The killer's next stop was the gas station. There, he fired his M1 carbine through the window at cashier Dean, but luckily missed. When he wanted to go into the room to finish off Dean, he accidentally removed the magazine from the carbine and it fell. This delay helped Dean - she locked the store from the inside and called the police. There was also a motorcyclist at the gas station who saw everything, but for some reason the shooter did not touch him. The motorcyclist drove to the nearest pay phone and also began calling the cops.

At 12:45 p.m., the shooter parked at his home in Hungerford. There he shot his own dog, then tried to drive away again, but the car wouldn’t start. The man set fire to the house, took his entire arsenal of weapons from the car and went on his walk...



It's time to meet him.

Michael Ryan was born on May 18, 1960 in England. It just so happened that the boy’s family was built on the principle “father works, and mother takes care of the children with the children.” And the boy’s father, in addition to earning money, loved to beat his wife. He seemed to have a son, but he didn’t really have one. Michael's connection with his mother Dorothy grew and strengthened, so much so that it turned into overprotection on the part of the mother.

At school, Ryan was an ordinary quiet boy who did not stand out with any talents. His only hobbies were cars and weapons. Michael's father gave him his first rifle when he was just 13 years old. In those days this was a completely ordinary event.



Michael Ryan

Michael began attending shooting clubs and became quite good at using different types of weapons.

Despite his reticence and slightly strange behavior, medical reports never mentioned any abnormalities or mental illness.



Dorothy and Alfred Ryan

The quiet one inside the house turned into a domestic boxer. Michael's father died, but the bruises on Dorothy's body did not disappear - now his son took out his anger and lack of separation on her. As often happens, his mother forgave him everything, buying whatever he wanted on demand.

What will come out of a cocktail with these ingredients: an overprotective mother, painful attachment to her, suppressed aggression, zero control over one’s own life and an arsenal of weapons? Not hard to guess.



By the way, about the arsenal. Ryan took to the streets of his hometown with the following set:

M1 carbine 0.30 caliber;

Beretta 92 9 mm pistol;

Winchester Model 1894 pump-action shotgun;

pump-action shotgun 12 gauge "Zabala";

semi-automatic rifle Type 56 caliber 7.62×39 mm;

Another pistol was under repair at the time of the events. The young man had all these weapons absolutely legally - to obtain and renew each of them, he honestly passed all examinations and tests.



This is what the ad looked like. "The perfect Christmas gift for my son"

After setting his own house on fire, Ryan shot Shelley Mason in the head as she went about her business in the garden. The psychopath killed the husband, who jumped out at the noise, with six shots.

Then he headed down the street, where he shot Majori Jason, who was looking at him from the window of her own house, and followed by 14-year-old Lisa, who found herself nearby on the street. Both victims were wounded but survived, and Lisa said Ryan smiled widely before shooting her in both legs.



When Michael went out to the field where the townspeople usually walked their dogs, he saw the Clements family there. The 51-year-old head of the family raised his hands at the sight of Michael, but he didn’t care at all: first he killed the man, and then his dog. He did not touch the rest of the family.

The next target was a police car that responded to a call about shooting - 23 bullets, 4 of which hit Roger Brereton. A policeman known throughout Hungerford has died.

During the shooting of a police car, Linda Chapman and her daughter Alison found themselves on the road, going about their business and then not yet knowing about the chaos happening in the city. Alison was wounded in the thigh and shin, and Linda in the shoulder. The women, running on frenzied adrenaline, jumped out of the car and, overcoming the pain, ran away from the shooter. Michael fired three times after them, wounding Linda in the back.

Immediately, without leaving the spot, Michael began firing from a Type 56 rifle at the Toyota in which was the husband of Marjorie Jason, who had been wounded by him earlier. His colleague George White was also in the car with him. George died on the spot, and Jason, seriously wounded, figured out to play dead, which saved his life.



Michael's further victims were Abdul Rahman Hanna and his neighbor Alain Lipetit. Afterwards, an ambulance traveling to respond to calls came under fire. The paramedic was wounded.

And then, on Fairview Road, right down the street, without hiding or hiding, his mother Dorothy came towards Michael. She walked, speaking to him not calmly, but even somehow threateningly, so that he would give up his weapon and surrender. She was angry that her beloved son had set fire to their house and caused such chaos. Ryan, without flinching, shot her in the leg, and when she fell, he walked up and shot his own mother at point-blank range.

Turning away from his mother's body, he wounded Betty Tollday, who decided to see what the noise was on the street.



The police, the ambulance - everyone was around Michael Ryan. But the fact was that the local police did not have military weapons, nor permission to use them - the cover that day was a sergeant, two patrolmen and one on duty. And the firearms squad was training 64 km from the city.

Yes, Hungerford was exactly the same town from the beginning of any horror film - quiet, calm, everyone knows each other, if not by name, but by sight. This was truly a community, and not just neighbors on the street, so the most the police did there was sometimes to calm down a couple of guys who were on a spree.

The telephone exchange was buzzing with calls, but it was physically unable to process a thousand calls from victims and witnesses, and the police station had only two telephone lines, which were being repaired that day.



Michael continued his bloody march, not paying attention to the helicopter circling above him. They constantly repeated on radio and television that all residents of the city should not go out into the streets. Ryan shot Francis Butler and was about to kill young Andrew Kandel, but the weapon misfired, which saved the guy as he pedaled away furiously.

Taxi driver Marcus Barned came under fire and was shot on the spot, also receiving several bullets in the head.

John Storm was driving a van, but thought to stop and lie down on the floor, which saved his life. In the center of the city, where the shooter was going, people had already been evacuated en masse, and on the way he killed 51-year-old Douglas Wainwright and wounded his wife through the windshield of the car. The woman realized that her husband was killed and managed to run out of the car and hide while Ryan was reloading the weapon.

It was Douglas Wainwright who signed the renewal of his gun license a few days before August 19...



A policeman holds in his arms a girl whose father was brutally shot

Kevin Lance and Eric Vardy were next. The latter died a few minutes later, and Kevin was seriously injured.

At approximately 1:30 p.m., Ryan killed a young woman, Sandra Hills, driver Jack Gibbs, and his wheelchair-bound wife, Myrtle. Several more people were wounded and Jan Playl was killed.

As a result, Michael Ryan finally made it to John O'Gaunt Community Technology College, where he had studied before. There he entered the classroom, barricaded himself and stayed there for several hours, refusing to give up. He told the negotiator that he had exactly one cartridge left. When the negotiator asked why only one, Michael replied: “What do you think?”

At 6:52 p.m., Michael Ryan committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. No one ever found out why he did this. But there was one more phrase that he defended during the conversation with the negotiator: “If it had started, none of this would have happened.”



The whole city was the hero in this story. The hospital was working at 200% capacity, trying to accommodate all the victims of varying severity. Ordinary residents of Hungerford tried to help those who could not get to the hospital themselves and who could not be reached by an ambulance. Particularly worth highlighting is Carl Harris, a military man who came to his hometown on leave. In general, the sounds of shooting in the town were familiar, because there were shooting clubs there, where studies and competitions regularly took place. But Harris, hearing gunfire in the distance, quickly realized that this was not like a normal training exercise. And when all the residents of the city fled from the shots, he carefully, hiding, moved as if towards the shooter. He understood that he would not be able to disarm or somehow capture the shooter and did what he could: Karl helped the wounded, pulled the dead aside, and pulled aside those who could walk.



Law. The Hungerford tragedy led to major changes to firearms laws being introduced in 1988. The document now prohibits ownership of semi-automatic centerfire rifles and prohibits the use of more than three rounds in a shotgun.

Michael Robert Ryan killed 16 people and injured fifteen more.

His last words were: "Hungerford must be in some disorder. I wish I had stayed in bed."



Relatives of the victims leave the church after the funeral service