The families of Halton McCollin, Louis Brathwaite and Giuseppe Gregory were each robbed of a much loved son by gun crime on the streets of Manchester. The killings were linked, and 14 years, two of those families - Halton's and Louis's - still haven't seen anyone brought to justice. In this, the fourth of a series of special features, M.E.N chief reporter Neal Keeling looks at the devastating effect of gun crime, through the eyes of an ordinary Manchester family.
When her brother was shot Renay was just eleven years old.
The pain of losing him has never subsided.
She's now 25, and still remembers Louis' vitality.
When he died after being injured in a gun attack in a Withington betting shop, the second of three lives lost in a cycle of shootings, Louis' left behind four siblings - an older brother, Jerome, and sisters, Janeece, Renay, and Monique.
"To know and to feel that someone with such a good energy and good soul was taken away from us still hasn’t sunk in even 'til this day 14 years on," Renay says now, talking to the Manchester Evening News.
"He brought smiles to all of us and his infectious energy brought joy to anyone who surrounded him.... what I would do to see that smile one last time!
"To think that nowadays, having a child, you have to worry about the school they go to, or the people their friends are...to be on edge, constantly, about what could potentially happen in a society that we shouldn’t have to live in.
"The senseless killing of young people has now become a hobby, as they feel it is so easy to commit a crime and get away with it.
"I lost my brother at a young age, but if society chooses to carry on the way it has, families will continue to lose sons and daughters, cousins or friends."
Renay has to live not only with her brother's absence, but the knowledge that his killer has still not been brought to justice. It's the 14th anniversary of his death, and still no-one has been charged.
"Thinking that holding your tongue and not saying something may feel right to you now, but when a similar situation happens to someone you love, and no one comes forward, that is when you will realise real pain," Renay says.
Jerome, 32, Louis' older brother, now has three children of his own, and has been hit hard by the murder.
"It hurts me to know I wont see my brother grow up and do brotherly things together like we used to do. I am suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and I am still having counselling as it has affected my life in a way I cannot describe," he said.
"I have lost my right arm, brother, and friend. The pain I wake up every morning knowing the fact he is no longer with me, is something I don't want to accept because I want to believe that I will see him, but the reality is I wont."
"Me and Louis used to play manhunt in the avenue," Jerome reminisces. "Louis had a love of motorbikes. He would save his car minding money to buy a little motorbike, knowing that he wasn't meant to bring it to the house.
"He would strip it down and leave it outside the house smelling of petrol. My mum used to have a moan, but we used to giggle about it.
"He would make sure he had £5 at the end of the week to top up (his phone) at the weekend, so he could ring girls.
"Me and him used to lie to my mum saying we were staying at friends, but really we were sneaking into a club called JJ's and Heaven and Hell.
"Louis used to say 'come on, let's go to town and see what girls we can pull'.
"We used to climb out of the bedroom window and sneak back in. Even when Louis was in hospital and fighting for life, he would still say 'what bits have you got for me Jerome' with a cheeky smile.
"Everyone that knew Louis knew that he really liked his true friends - he would say 'they are friends for life'.
"All I have got is memories of him. When I go to the cemetery it cuts me up. When I look down at his grave all I can think is my brother six foot under, and he was 16 - not even started living.
"I miss his phone calls and we used to meet up. He will never meet his nephews and nieces."
The scars are deep for Louis' mother too.
A mother's pain
Sophia Zollner laughs as she describes how he would earn cash minding the cars of Manchester City fans.
In the days when the Blues' home was Maine Road he had his own 'patch' near the avenue where he lived in Fallowfield.
"He was a hustler," she says, grinning.
He would make as much as £10 a game and it would go towards his obsession with motorbikes.
The memory of his smile also remains vivid.
She does not want to erase them.
In a box in her room are pictures of her son, his passport, national insurance number, and a lock of his hair.
The pictures include stark, final ones of him lay in a chapel of rest, in his coffin, and in a morgue.
Louis was not a gang member, but had childhood friends who were - the root cause, possibly, of why he was hit in the reckless cross-fire of a tit-for-tat killing spree.
"The anger doesn't subside, but I have to live with it. I have anger because I have not got justice. But as time as gone on I have learned that my son was not the target," Sophia says.
"But I still have questions that have not been answered.
"Someone took my child away from me. But I have to keep my head above water because I have other children to care for. But my heart is broken."
She says Louis' siblings, older brother Jerome, now 32, and sisters Janeece, 28, Renay, 25, and Monique, 18, were hit hard by the murder.
"They were devastated, four of them, Louis, Jerome, Janeece and Renay grew up together, Monique was only a baby at the time. My oldest girl really struggles with it, she can't comprehend that she no longer has Louis as a brother.
"My eldest children have their own families and children now and they always talk about Louis to keep his memory alive. They will have conversations and say 'if Louis was here, we know what he would be doing'. He loved children so much."
The day of the shooting is also embossed in her mind.
"It was a Tuesday night and me and my friends came back home from the gym. I came in the house and the next minute my door is banging down.
"It was Jerome, 'Mum, quick, Louis has been shot'. I had Monique on my knee. So I rang the neighbour's and they said they would take me to the bookies. So we flew down the bookies.
"I got out of the car and said to one of the police officers I believe my son has been shot. He let me ride in the ambulance with Louis. He was lay on a stretcher with blood all over him and his hood up."
At Trafford General Hospital she kissed her son before he was taken to an operating theatre where one of two bullets lodged in his body was removed.
He required multiple blood transfusions and was placed in intensive care. The removed bullet had gone into his arm, but a second, which entered his chest, had been left in his groin and it was deemed too dangerous to remove.
"He was talking to me, but it was sometimes gibberish, stuff about when he was a kid. The medication they put him on made him a bit delusional and he was hallucinating.
"Eventually they moved him to a ward with old people where they wanted to keep him until they got a place for him at the children's hospital. Eventually the other people on the ward took a shine to Louis and said he was a joker.
"There was a gentleman patient who he swapped beds with so he could be by the window and he took Louis under his wing.
"His friends came to see him all the time. He was sat up chatting. He was making progress. But on day ten after the shooting I remember asking a nurse why Louis' one side had caved in. She said they were going to take him for a scan.
"We thought he was getting better. On the Sunday morning he rang me saying 'mum can you bring me some crisps and Ribena'. He said he was just going outside for a cigarette with a nurse. I thought 'wow, this is massive (improvement)'. I thought I can relax a bit now."
But two days later she received a call from Louis' grandmother asking her to get to the hospital. Shortly afterwards she was called by the hospital asking her how long it would take her to get there.
"I set off still thinking nothing of it," Sophia recalls. "I thought they might have to sedate Louis. I got to the hospital and my mum was there trying to hold up, and I asked what's going on.
"The doctors came out to me and said we have to resuscitate Louis. They said they were taking him to theatre to remove the other bullet.
"I went back in the room where he was and remember seeing all the doctors around him. and they were there literally resuscitating him. I looked at the machine and noticed his blood pressure was dropping, slowly. Then I felt like a stab in the heart and I knew he had died then. I knew he had passed away."
She later learned that medics had resuscitated Louis three times on the ward before he was brought to intensive care.
"I think they prolonged his life until I got there. He died on the 10th February at 7.26pm."
Louis succumbed to internal bleeding.
Before he died Louis told his mother who he thought may have been responsible for shooting him. In the years since other names have cropped up.
But despite good intelligence, with no statements, GMP and Crown lawyers cannot progress to charging.
"He had an idea (of who shot him), but there was no concrete evidence.
"He was saying names that I disclosed to the police, that were investigated, but nothing has ever come of it," said Sophia.
Louis was killed at a time when gang tensions were high in south Manchester.
It made young lads like Louis, who grew up on the same estates as boys who got pulled into scene, vulnerable - and unfairly, and dangerously labelled.
Sophia, 53, said: "As a mother, I would say to those who know something, I know you are scared to say something because you don't want repercussions.
"But at the end of the day you have to look at it this way - it's another life, and someone has to stand up - there are too m may lives that have been taken by knife and gun crime.
"As a mum I am pleading to friends, and girlfriends (of those responsible) to contact the police. The police have so many measures now where they can protect you, and move you away if they have to, if you think your life is in danger.
"There are people out there talking about what happened on the night Louis was shot. We needed pieces of the jigsaw to complete the picture.
"There are girls and guys who know what happened that night, I know they do. I am pleading, let me at least have some justice. All I have are memories and not just me, but other mothers and fathers in the same situation deserve justice.
"They have not had a chance to live their lives, just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Innocent people have been shot while the culprits have walked away and are getting on with their lives.
"No one should be able to live with the guilt that they know how someone, entirely innocent was murdered."
Asked how often she thinks of Louis, Sophia says: "When don't I? I have never really dealt with Louis' death because I had to be the strong one. I had to carry everybody.
"I went to see a counsellor, but it didn't work for me. The reason it didn't was because I didn't want to accept it. if I accept that Louis is not here, I am scared of how I will be, and I have the other children to consider. I think I would crumble - and I have to be the strong person - that's my coping mechanism."
Louis was a pupil at Oakwood High - now Chorlton High School, and before that attended the school just a few hundred yards from his home, Wilbraham Primary, where Sophia is a special educational needs teaching assistant.
There is a £50,000 reward still on offer for information on Louis murder. But Sophia questions how realistic that amount is to tempt someone to provide enough information that will result in a conviction.
"That is an insult, you cannot put an amount of money on someone's life. Someone who has information would need more to move away and make a new life - it is insufficient."
Her answer is bleak when asked if she believes her son's killers will be caught. "To be honest. I don't think I will ever get justice because there are too many people scared to come forward. There are people out there who think they can control what gets said and what doesn't get said.
"I get it why people are scared. Sometimes I feel like, what's the point, then I think if I don't do it, (seek justice) who will. I have to carry on fighting. I have to fight until the day I die. "
Among the tributes left in a shrine outside the bookies where Louis was shot was a Manchester City shirt.
A powerful legacy
Louis and Halton's deaths would be the catalyst for a new approach to fighting gun crime in Greater Manchester.
GMP's Operation Cougar would be praised by the government as a "creative and innovative" way of halting gangland shootings.
In 2004 GMP had already set up Operation Xcalibre, which led to the jailing of key gang members like senior Gooch figures Colin Joyce and Lee Amos in 2009.
Cougar was a refuelled continuation of that intensive, intelligence-led approach to fighting gang crime.
Police also knew that the key to solving the city's gun murders lay in the very communities that were being tarnished by the problem.
And so cooperation was key.
Communities in south Manchester were already taking a stand against the issue, working with police on initiatives like Peace Week - anti-gun and gang activities in Moss Side, Rusholme, Hulme, Longsight, Old Trafford and Ardwick.
Meanwhile groups like Mothers Against Violence, and Fathers Against Violence, led by Giuseppe Gregory's father, James Gregory, took on the vital task of reaching out to young people.
The results were significant.
By October 2013 the Manchester Evening News was able to report that the number of shootings had dropped from a peak of 146 in 12 months in 2007/08 in Greater Manchester, to 34 in 2012/2013.
In recent years however, the numbers of shootings appears to have crept up again.
From April 2018 to April 2019 there were 62 shootings across Greater Manchester, largely to the north and the west of the region. In 2019/20 it rose to 85.
In 2020/21 there were 71 firearms discharges which resulted in 17 people being injured and three killed.
The fatalities included promising boxer, Cole Kershaw, 18, shot in August 2020 in Bury; and a double murder in Moss Side during a street party last June which claimed the lives of Cheriff Tall, 21, and Abayomi 'Junior' Ajose, 36.
The families of Cheriff and Abayomi wait for justice, just like Louis' loved ones.
But there is hope.
Prime suspects
Cold case cops have two prime suspects for the murder of Louis, the MEN can reveal.
Martin Bottomley head of GMP's Cold Case Unit, said: "About five days before Louis was shot there was an incident outside the same bookmakers.
"There was a firearms discharge at a group of young men outside the bookies.
"On that occasion nobody was injured and the getaway car made off from the scene very quickly.
"Five days later, 14 years ago, Louis was shot.
Mr Bottomley said: "The shooting is also linked to the shooting of Halton McCollin (who was shot in Stretford in a case of mistaken identity) a couple of weeks beforehand.
"But Louis was not a gang member.
"I believe he was an innocent young man caught in the cross-fire of tit-for-tat shootings between two rival gangs, and Louis just happened to know some of the people in those gangs.
"Twelve months later Giuseppe Gregory was shot dead and a man was later convicted of that murder.
"(Zerihun) was present at the bookies at the shooting before the one in which Louis was killed. Undeniably they are all linked."
Speaking of what is known about the shooting which claimed Louis' life, Mr Bottomley added: "Two masked men went into the bookies and fired five shots.
"They escaped with a black Volkswagen driven by a third man - so three men were involved in Louis' shooting.
"Within the bookies Louis was injured and was taken to an intensive care unit.
"Another young man he was also with was injured.
"Louis was hit twice, once in the shoulder and once in the abdomen.
"It was the shot in the abdomen that really caused the fatal injury.
"There were complications when he came out of ICU with an infection, and that is when he passed away.
"There is a £50,000 reward still on still on offer for any information that leads to the arrest and conviction of any of these three men.
"Regarding the investigation into Louis' murder people have been arrested and we have received a lot of intelligence from the community at the time.
"But what we didn't receive was a statement from somebody who knows the truth.
"There are three men involved.
"They have girlfriends, former girlfriends, former friends.
"Somebody somewhere, 14 years later must look into their conscience.
"They know who has done this.
"We have a couple of names in the frame so to speak, and we just need that one piece of information as to who pulled the trigger, or who was driving the getaway car.
"Or who was the man who opened the door for the shooter to shoot Louis?
"They are all equally involved and guilty of murder.
"The police service has a well established witness protection programme.
"If someone needs to go into it that can be arranged.
"But what we really need is a statement from someone who knows what happens and wants to clear their conscience."
Anyone with information can call GMP on 0161 856 5978 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
