Anglonautes > English Vocabulary / words > UK

SILENCE was the first thing you noticed in Dunblane yesterday morning. It was as if the tiny cathedral city had been struck dumb by disaster. The streets were deserted, shops shut, cars locked and empty. Only the urgent siren of a police car or an ambulance heading towards the school sent out alert signals.

It was as you approached the primary school, across the Allan Water, that you first saw the parents, gathered outside the entrance. They were waiting patiently in a straggling queue, with that strained, almost vacant look that goes with shock.

There was little sign of emotion. The Scots do not tend to grieve in public. Just the occasional hug, red eyes, or a hand raised to cover a trembling lip indicated the depth of feeling. A woman whose son was a student teacher did not know whether he had been teaching Primary 1 or not. “He’s been transferred from class to class,” she said. “I don’t know where he ended up, and they won’t say who the teacher was that died.” Another, who did not know which class had been attacked, seemed not to understand when she was told that it was the younger children. “But they couldn’t do that,” she said. “They just couldn’t.”

Those who were allowed in betrayed something of the horror they had seen. A party of Scottish Office civil servants seemed almost unable to speak, and even the police spokesman had to control the tremor in his voice as he gave out the sparse details of what he had witnessed. When, later in the afternoon, the Secretary of State Michael Forsyth, and the Shadow Secretary, George Robertson, took their places to address an improvised press conference, they seemed to be in shock. Both had been shown the blood-stained gymnasium, the scene of the carnage.

From he Times Archives >
On This Day - March 14, 1996,
Times,
March 14, 2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp - broken link

August 13 1966

Search

for killers of three policemen

From The Guardian archive

[Harry Roberts, now 71, who is serving a life sentence for his part in these murders, was in June this year granted leave to seek a high court judicial review against refusal of parole.]

Three plain-clothes police officers were shot dead yesterday after they had stopped a car near Wormwood Scrubs, West London.

As two of the officers stepped out of their blue Triumph 2000 car, they were shot down by men who had got out of another car. At least three shots rang out killing the two officers. The third was shot dead through the windscreen of the car.

As it accelerated, the gang's car — described as a blue-grey Vanguard — ran over one policeman. After the shooting, one of the police officers lay sprawled under the rear wheels of the police car and the driver lay slumped against the steering-wheel, behind the shattered windscreen. The body of the third police officer was lying 20 yards away from the car.

Late last night every available policeman in London joined the hunt for the killers — many reported from days off or returned from holiday. It was stated that "one or two" officers may be armed with revolvers during the investigation. Tear gas and arms have been made ready.

The Siege of Sidney Street in 1910 was the only previous occasion in Britain when three policemen were shot dead in one incident.

Ten school-children, who said they saw the shooting, were taken to Scotland Yard by Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Butler, head of the Flying Squad, and spent an hour looking at pictures in the "rogues gallery".

The shooting took place in a quiet street, beside fields scattered with playing children: and late at night police had not discovered why the "Q" car had stopped to question the men. One version is that the police car, making a routine check, stopped alongside the gang's car.

Detective Constable Wombwell went across to question the driver but was shot and left dying by the police car, Detective Sergeant Head rushed out of the car and was shot in the back as he went for help. One of the gang then coldbloodedly smashed the Triumph's windscreen and shot Constable Fox, the driver, as he attempted to block the bandits' getaway.

A major question facing Scotland Yard was why such a determined attempt was made to kill the officers. Did the men feel they had been recognised as criminals already wanted for a serious crime, one which might carry a long sentence ? Or were they just young thugs who panicked? The latter seems unlikely.

From The Guardian archive >
Search for killers of three policemen,
August 13 1966,
G,
republished 13 August 2007
p. 28,
http://digital.guardian.co.uk/guardian/2007/08/13/
pages/ber28.shtml

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