The government is to look at tightening gun controls after a teenager who bought a shotgun by forging a firearms licence was jailed for life for murdering his family and planning a school massacre.
The full details of Nicholas Prosper’s failed plot to storm a morning assembly at his old school and kill 30 children in a bid to become notorious as the worst mass murderer in British history were made public this week.
Also revealed were details of his disturbing online history and fixation with mass killings – which included an obsession with the Sandy Hook and Columbine school killings in the US – as well as his interest in extreme pornography and paedophilia. On Wednesday, he was sentenced to a minimum term of 49 years in prison.
The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, called the murders “a horrendous and cowardly attack of unthinkable brutality” and said the government will look at tightening private firearms sales.
Prosper shot dead his mother, Juliana Falcon, 48, and two younger siblings – Kyle, 16, and Giselle, 13 – at their home in Luton last September using a double-barrelled shotgun he had bought the day before from a private online seller.
He bought the gun and 100 cartridges for £650 after creating a “meticulously forged” firearms certificate. After murdering his family, he fled their flat with a bag carrying the gun and 33 cartridges before being arrested two hours later. The number of cartridges in his possession matched the death toll he wanted to reach at St Joseph’s Catholic primary school in Luton, where he was once a pupil.
He had planned to shoot dead 30 four-year-olds, two teachers and himself that day. Prosper said he wanted to exceed the death toll of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, which remains the deadliest school shooting in the US, leaving 33 dead.
He gave himself up to police on the morning of the planned attack after believing his plans had been thwarted. He was forced to flee his flat hours earlier than expected after police were called by neighbours alarmed by the sounds of frantic footsteps, shouting and gunshots as he attacked his family.
The Bedfordshire police and crime commissioner, John Tizard, wrote to the home secretary before Prosper’s sentencing to request an urgent review of firearms licensing.
Tizard called for a national database of firearm licence holders and said licences presented to private sellers should be shared and confirmed as legitimate by police before a sale or exchange.
Cooper said: “What we have seen again in this case again is senseless killings fuelled purely by a disturbing fixation with violence and obsessive brutality. This terrible case has exposed deep and longstanding weaknesses in private firearms sales, and we are urgently looking at how we can tighten these controls.”
She said the case “also shows an urgent need to look at the very disturbing way some young people are becoming fixated with extreme violent material online and the real dangers to our communities as a result”.
Prosper’s sentence has been referred to the unduly lenient sentence scheme by the shadow justice minister, Kieran Mullan.
A string of high-profile, brutal murders committed byyoung men have drawn nationwide attention and plans for government intervention. In January, Keir Starmer ordered a public inquiry into the failings that allowed the Southport killer, Axel Rudakubana, to murder three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last July.
Rudakubana was referred to the government’s Prevent counter-terror programme after researching school shootings, the first of three referrals.
Despite looking up similar content at home, Prosper was not referred to Prevent because the extent of his disturbing obsessions were only clear after his devices were analysed by police after the murders.
In the course of the sentencing, the extent of Prosper’s troubling online interests were revealed. This included joining a “paedophile Twitter group to discuss sexual attraction to children”, researching necrophilia and watching extreme animated pornography.
He was in the possession of more than 200 indecent images and videos of children. Nineteen of them depicted the rape of children.
He also had an obsession with the Walking Dead video game and referenced it in a video recorded the day before the killings. In the video, wearing a black and yellow “uniform” including a yellow bucket hat, Prosper said his sister would be “mutilated” for making “incorrect choices” in the game.
The judge, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, said his online history showed he had sought to “emulate and outdo” the Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech shooters and intended to surpass the death toll of the latter massacre. He had also collected pictures of a six-year-old victim of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre.
Among the last images he looked at before murdering his family were those from the 1999 Columbine high school massacre.
Cheema-Grubb said: “As the investigation revealed, this case incorporates many recurrent themes in school shootings such as a young male perpetrator, selection of distinctive clothing or uniform, recording a message about the activities, a sexual interest in children, withdrawing into an online world, reference to violent computer games, suicidal intention and a lack of empathy towards the victims.”
