The bravest of cops, a cowardly killer - the awful truth about Dale Cregan, ten years on
PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes didn't stand a chance as they responded to what they thought was a routine report of a burglary. The pair stepped out of their police van and walked up to the front door of a three-bed maisonette, into a slaughter that was so gratuitous the shock still reverberates today.
As he opened the front door to the maisonette in Abbey Gardens, Mottram in Longdendale, to confront the approaching officers, he blasted them both in the chest. The only reason they didn’t perish there and then was because they were wearing body armour. Despite the fact both police officers were dying in front of him, Cregan’s assault had not yet run its course. He turned again to PC Hughes who was by now face-down, motionless and bleeding heavily on the pavement. Cregan lowered the gun to the back of her head and fired three more shots. In total she was shot eight times.
Cregan grabbed car keys and fled in a BMW parked outside which belonged to one of his hostages, driving at speeds up to 100mph along the M67 to Hyde police station, three miles away, where he handed himself in. Cregan, still talking to his girlfriend on the mobile held between his shoulder and ear, stretched out his arms and invited to be handcuffed.
It changed how policing was done in Britain and left deep psychological scars. Some officers, especially those who saw the carnage for themselves, would never return to work. One took his own life. For others who still remain, police officers of all ranks, it defines their lives, the policing decisions they make.Months earlier, on May 25, 2012, Cregan had coolly walked into the Cotton Tree pub in Droylsden and shot dead amateur boxer and fellow criminal Mark Short, 23.
After watching Usain Bolt win Olympic gold in the 200m, Cregan made final preparations for the murder of David Short. On the morning of August 10, Cregan and his friend Anthony Wilkinson, who was said to have owed David Short £20,000 drugs money, gunned down their target at his home in Folkestone Road East in Clayton. Cregan threw a grenade onto the body for good measure.
Like so many things in Cregan's life to that point, he did everything on his own terms. He wasn't captured. After shooting dead the two PCs, he didn't hang about waiting for the armed police to turn up. He went to the nearest police station and handed himself in. Jermaine Ward, then 24, a drug dealer known as 'Jam', was found guilty of playing a part in the murder of David Short in Clayton. He had been Cregan's getaway driver - Cregan had jumped into the rear of the getaway car with David Short's blood all over his body and celebrated with a fist-bump with Wilkinson. Ward was jailed for life to serve a minimum of 33 years.
It was truly shocking summer of violence in Greater Manchester. Before he had even killed the two police officers, Cregan had become a demonic figure, with his one good eye staring out from his police mugshot, feared not only by the public but by police officers too.
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