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 Daniel Rose |
Gunned down in nightclub
Shooting days after police warning to club manager
A FATHER-OF-TWO was shot in the head while partying at a King’s Cross dance venue – just four days after nightclub managers were explicitly warned by police about the danger of gun gangs.
Murder squad police are hunting the killer of Daniel Ross, 22, who was gunned down at point blank range inside the Scala club in Pentonville Road on Sunday morning. He died in hospital after failing to respond to tests on his brain.
The shooting came less than a week after all of Camden’s nightclub owners were briefed on gun crime at a special police summit.
Chillingly, an overhead map of the Scala was used by officers as a fictional shooting scenario as firearms experts warned bosses to “target harden” their premises.
The seminar had been set-up following a series of incidents in the King’s Cross area, including the gun murder of raver Sharif Zaiden, 18, in the nearby Egg club six weeks ago.
Sergeant Michael Meaney told the meeting: “You need to search everybody coming into the club including anybody who might be performing there. You need to search ladies as well. It is quite common for them to bring a gun into the club in a purse of something.”
He added that ‘garage’, a punchy form of dance music using a two-step beat, appeared to attract gun incidents.
Police from Operation Trident, the unit which investigates black on black killings, have struggled to find witnesses to the Scala shooting even though up to 1,000 people were inside.
Mr Ross, whose family are from Kilburn and is a former pupil of St Augustine’s secondary school in Oxford Road, was standing near the DJ booth when he was shot. He was rushed to University College Hospital but his life support machine was switched off after a brain stem test failed. His girlfriend, Vanessa, visited the scene yesterday (Wednesday) in tears and said: “Why? That’s all I want to say. Black people killing black people. He was only there for a night out.”
Detective Chief Inspector Fiona Mallon said: “We have no witnesses to the shooting itself. The victim was standing virtually next to the cage where DJs were playing music. I can’t see how they wouldn’t have seen the person who did it.”
The lack of witnesses bears similarities to the unsolved murder of student Wajahat Sheikh on the dancefloor at the same club in 2001.
She added: “Daniel’s family are understandably distraught and very confused as to why their son was killed.”
But the shooting will sadly come as no surprise to armed police who were busy briefing nightclub managers in the days before the killing. Sergeant Meaney made clear the dangers at the ‘Clubwatch’ seminar held at The Cross club, also in King’s Cross, last Wednesday.
He said: “You have wives, husbands, partners and children and some spotty 17 year-old can kill you. He just wants to kill someone.”
The firearms expert showed pictures of guns and fake replicas as guests struggled to work out which were real or not. He told owners to use a chicane of fences to stop gangs charging into the clubs.
Sgt Meaney said that police had to allow potential witnesses to leave a club, adding: “We accept that some evidence is going to be lost but we have a duty to make sure everybody is safe.”
He added: “There is something that attracts young black men to carrying a gun. It is about status and it is about power. It is only at particular nights that this kind of thing happens. I don’t know why, I don’t know the different kinds of music but if you were to play diddly Irish music you are not going to have a shooting in the club. It is your choice but it is something that you should have in mind.”
The Scala nor the organisers of the Garage Fever club night have commented on Mr Ross’s death. |
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