UCAL Chin was shot in June 2007 as tensions re-ignited between the Longsight Crew and the Gooch gang.

Ucal’s family have always denied he was a gang member, but he did have a known Longsight Crew member in the car with him on the day he was ambushed on Anson Road, Longsight.

The victim of the fifth drive-by shooting that week in Manchester, it is likely that Ucal was spotted by chance by Joyce and Amos while they were out cruising in the area.

Weeks before his death, he became father to a baby girl. Described by loved ones as a ‘loving, caring boy with no enemies’, he was studying at college in the hope of becoming an engineer.

His funeral was attended by scores of people and, because of the nature of his death, the service and the West Indian Centre wake that followed were given police protection.

Spotters

After the official celebrations an impromptu wake was held near Ucal’s family home. The gunmen – who probably employed spotters to track the movement of mourners – targeted this, knowing Longsight Crew members were likely to be there.

Tyrone Gilbert was a Longsight Crew member trying to change his ways at the time of his death.

By the age of 23, the gang lifestyle meant he had already been touched by more tragedy than most people experience in a lifetime.

His brother, Marcus Greenidge, was gunned down by the Pitt Bull Crew in 2000. And he was with Fabian Flowers, 19, who was killed after a key-fob gun went off in a Stockport nightclub, on a fatal night in 2005.

Two years earlier, Tyrone had enrolled on a course aimed at helping young adults back into education.

And after serving a sentence for affray after a showdown between Longsight Crew and the Gooch gang at Manchester Royal Infirmary, he renewed efforts to change his ways in 2007.

After he was murdered while attending his friend Ucal Chin’s wake, friends told the M.E.N. that Tyrone had been avoiding old haunts and had only returned to the Grove Village estate for the funeral.

But in the weeks before Tyrone was killed, Narada Williams of the Gooch gang had been seen asking around for him, apparently with bad intentions in mind.

In a tragic twist, Tyrone ended up being the victim of indiscriminate shooting after the Gooch gang opened fire on mourners near Ucal’s family home in July 2007.