Four guilty of New Year party murders
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Four men were today found guilty of murdering two teenage girls who were gunned down outside a New Year party two years ago.
Four men were today found guilty of murdering two teenage girls who were gunned down outside a New Year party two years ago.
Charlene Ellis, 18, and Letisha Shakespeare, 17, died in a hail of bullets in a drive-by shooting outside the Uniseven hairdressing salon in Aston, Birmingham, in the early hours of January 2 2003.
Today their killers were found guilty by a jury at Leicester Crown Court.
Marcus Ellis, 24, from Devonshire Avenue, Winson Green, Birmingham, Michael Gregory, 23, from Ryland Street, Ladywood, Birmingham, Nathan Martin, 26, from South Road, Smethwick, West Midlands and Rodrigo Simms, 20, from Whitehouse Drive, Smethwick, West Midlands, were all found guilty of murder.
The four defendants were also convicted of three counts of attempting to murderCharlene Ellis's twin sister Sophia and their friend Cheryl Shaw.
Three of the defendants, Martin, Gregory and Ellis, were also convicted of attempting to murder another partygoer, Leon Harris. Simms was cleared of the same charge.
The panel of seven women and five men were in their third day of deliberations at the end of the four-month trial.
Earlier, Mr Justice Goldring directed the jurors to consider majority verdicts after the forewoman told him they had not reached verdicts on which all 12 were agreed.
The prosecution claimed the shooting was a "botched" revenge attack by one rival gang on another.
Charlene's twin Sophia, Cheryl Shaw, and Leon Harris were also injured in the attack.
The four convicted of the murder included the twins' half-brother Marcus Ellis. Along with the other men, he was alleged to be a member of the Burger Bar Boys gang.
A fifth man, Jermaine Carty, 24, was cleared of possessing a firearm on the night of the shooting.
Carty, from Cheyne Walk, Lozells, Birmingham, was alleged to be a member of the rival Johnson Crew who had taunted the Burger Bar Boys on stage at a Solihull nightclub earlier in the evening.
The Crown alleged this was a "catalyst" for the shooting.
Martin is also said to have wanted to avenge the death of his brother, Yohanne, who was shot dead in West Bromwich in December 2002 in an attack blamed on the Johnson Crew.
The four men convicted of murder denied any links to gangs and any knowledge of the shooting.
They also rejected claims linking them to a number of mobile phones said to have been used in and around the salon in the minutes before the shootings and near where the car was later found burnt-out.
All four men will be sentenced at the same court on Monday morning.
The guilty verdicts were all by majority, with the exception of the twins' half-brother Marcus, who was convicted unanimously.
College students Charlene and Letisha were gunned down at 4.08am on Churchill Parade, off Birchfield Road, Aston, as they took some air outside the party.
They were hit by a burst from an illegal MAC-10 semi-automatic sub-machine gun, fired from a red Ford Mondeo, that also left Sophia Ellis and Cheryl Shaw injured.
Leon Harris escaped unharmed in another burst of fire seconds later from a 9mm 1944 Spanish Llama pistol aimed at a Ford Orion car in which he was sitting.
The Mondeo, which had been bought just days before the shootings and had its windows tinted, was later found burnt-out in a community centre car park in Smethwick in an attempt to hide the evidence.
But a forensic examination later found spent and live ammunition that matched that used outside the hair salon.
The men were also trapped by mobile phone evidence that put them in and around the hair salon and the community centre at the time of the attack.
The prosecution said the shooting was a planned and co-ordinated revenge and reprisal attack committed by the Burger Bar Boys on members of their rivals, the Johnson Crew.
But the attack was "botched" as their intended target, Jermaine Carty, escaped unhurt and the girls died.