No suspect located after armed police officers responded to reports of a man with a gun seen entering a property in Liverpool, Merseyside. Click on media link to read full report.

Robert O’Rourke, 49, received a sixteen-week prison sentence suspended for two years and was made the subject of an eight-week curfew between 7pm and 7am after he admitted possessing a .177 BB firing resolver. Police found the fully-loaded “very realistic” gun in the footwell when they stopped his car as it was being driven without lights in Mold, Wales. The officers treated it as real and a firearms squad was called out to make it safe. O’Rourke claimed it was for his own personal use because he “enjoyed shooting cans”. He was ordered to pay £85 costs and a £115 surcharge, and a confiscation and destruction order was made for the gun

Police Constables Simon Jones and Joanne Kelly have been dismissed for gross misconduct after a disciplinary hearing for unlawfully arresting a man and shooting him with a stun gun in Liverpool, Merseyside. He was arrested in 2009 after urinating in public and put into van where he was shot five times, three times with the weapon pressed directly against his chest leg and abdomen. An officer also removed the barbs from his chest despite knowing that these should be removed by a health professional. A police force report had initially found the use of the taser to be proportionate but the Independent Police Complaints Commission rejected this.

Matthew Thomas, aged 44, has been handed a custodial sentence of three years, two months after admitting possession of an imitation firearm and a bladed article in a public place in breach of two suspended sentences. In February, Thomas complained about his wife to a member of staff at a café in Cardiff, Wales before lifting his jumper to show her a gun in his waistband and saying: “I’m going to prison for a long time. I’m going to shoot someone.” He went on to show the woman that he had an axe in his bag, adding: “This is what happens if someone is not nice to me.” As the woman called her boss, Thomas left the café, but armed police officers later arrested him at his home, where they found a broken toy plastic gun and a wooden-handled hatchet. The court heard that, despite Thomas repeatedly breaching a restraining order given after he stalked his ex-wife, a pre-sentence report said a community order could normally have been considered; however, as Covid-19 was preventing “robust” community orders, the judge imposed a jail sentence. 

A suspected handgun has been found in the garden of a property that had belonged to a police sergeant who died in 2006 in Kirkwell, Orkney. The officer was a friend of another officer whose 15-year-old son was jailed for a minimum of 25 years in 2008 for shooting dead a waiter at a busy family restaurant in the town, using a gun that was never recovered.