The brutal gang war that led to one of Merseyside's darkest days

Strand Gang member Joey Thompson was 32 when he was hit with a hail of bullets just a road away from the location where his firm took their name.

A gunman, who to this day has not been convicted due to a "wall of silence", showered the dad-of-four and his friend Kevin Murray with bullets. Murray survived the attack, but Thompson, despite the efforts of paramedics at the scene, died of his injuries. The shooting was one of a number of attacks that played out across the streets of Norris Green and Croxteth during the 2000s and early 2010s.

Ordinary, hard-working families were forced to look the other way as the two gangs - the Strand Gang, named after their favoured hang-out outside the Strand shops on Scargreen Avenue and also known as the Nogga Dogs, and the Croxteth 'Crocky' Crew - waged war as they laid claim to slithers of proclaimed territory.

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Dr Robert Hesketh, a criminologist at Liverpool John Moores University, previously told Sky News: "These groups are willing to put their life on the line for a strip of land, which is sometimes just a litter-strewn field." Their conflict also resulted in one of the darkest periods of Liverpool's history - the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones, who was shot dead by a Croxteth Crew gang member after football practice.

This month marks 12 years since Thompson was killed. The ECHO earlier this week issued an appeal for information for anyone who may hold the answers as to who shot him to come forward. And today, as part of a bi-monthly series looking back at organised crime in the region, the ECHO has revisited the notorious gang war that became national front page news.

Early warning signs

For years, young men, dressed in black tracksuits and balaclavas and bearing crude weaponry acquired through criminal connections had feuded across L11, leaving the good and honest families equally ashamed and terrified. The two collectives - made up of teenagers and men in their 20s - had access to firearms and a desire for violence.

The Strand Gang was said to be larger in number but less well organised than the Croxteth Crew. The threat of the gangs left youngsters with the uncomfortable choices of being an ally or an enemy to their operations. Children as young as 12 were swept up into the gangs.

One early flashpoint into what was to follow was a 2003 New Year's Eve murder. Danny McDonald was drinking with friends when a masked gunman calmly walked into the Royal Oak pub in Muirhead Avenue East, Norris Green, and blasted him four times with a powerful handgun.

The 20-year-old staggered towards the door but collapsed as fellow drinkers looked on in horror. The gunman then turned and fired again, hitting his best friend John Cummins in the stomach before fleeing the scene. Two men from Norris Green were among those held and questioned before being bailed pending further investigations.

Within two days, police were called to deal with two revenge shootings in Croxteth. Just 24 hours after the death of McDonald, heavily linked to the Croxteth Crew, bullets were fired at a house in Sovereign Road, Croxteth. Luckily no one was injured.

Over the next four years, detectives linked 17 shootings and 70 acts of criminal damage to the two gangs. Members, who believed they were untouchable due to the fear they instilled, walked around their estates wearing body armour. To counter the growing threat of gang violence in Merseyside - which was also a prominent threat in north Liverpool where the Gee brothers' Grizedale estate gang were waging a war with Kirkdale-based rivals - a new police unit was created.

Built off the back of a specialist unit that had targeted the Gees in 2004, the Matrix was founded the following year dedicated to gun and gang crime at all levels from armed response to education and community involvement.

Second killing linked to gang feud

Many of the shootings were tit-for-tat damage and injury attacks but in 2006 the rivalry again left a family faced with the death of a loved one. This time the victim was a prominent figure in the Strand Gang, Liam “Smigger” Smith. The 19-year-old, like McDonald, was killed by gunfire.

However, unlike before, Smith's killers were found, and the successful prosecution against them once again highlighted the murderous rivalry within the streets of L11. Smith was shot in the head after a bust up with Croxteth Crew inmate Ryan Lloyd. The incident, which took place at HMP Altcourse, led to Lloyd storming out the visiting hall and returning to his wing where he made a series of furious phone calls to his gang using a stashed mobile.

Within an hour, Smith, who had been visiting a friend, was shot with a sawn-off shotgun as he was ambushed outside the front entrance of the prison. The attack was not even the first time Smith had been the victim of a shooting. Medics examining his body found pellets from another gun attack, which he did not report, dating back to March 2005.

Lloyd, Thomas Forshaw, then of Middle Way, Croxteth, and a 16-year-old boy - later confirmed to be Sean Farrell - were found guilty of Smith’s murder, while Liam Duffy, then of Polperro Close in Croxteth, was convicted of manslaughter.

At the murder trial Neil Flewitt KC, prosecuting, told the jury: "The murder of Liam Smith was yet another, and on this occasion fatal, example of the mindless and indiscriminate violence that was a feature of the rivalry between the Croxteth Crew and the Strand Gang."

One of Merseyside's darkest days

Eleven-year-old Rhys was shot dead as he walked home from football practice on August 22, 2007. Rhys was leaving the Croxteth Fir Tree pub car park when he was hit by a bullet fired from Sean Mercer's gun. Mercer, who was 16 at the time he pulled the trigger, was intending to shoot at rival Wayne Brady, a member of the Strand Gang who was in the Croxteth Crew's territory.

Mercer had a "determination to kill" when he arrived on his bike at the pub and even fired the ancient Smith & Wesson handgun again after seeing innocent Rhys fall. Immediately after the killing of the youngster, Mercer and his mob of accomplices began their cover up of the horrific crime.

James Yates was 20 when he was jailed for supplying the gun used to shoot Rhys. He also helped Mercer cover his tracks by washing him in petrol to destroy evidence. At the time of the killing, he was in a thigh-high plaster cast after crashing a quad bike three months before.

Nathan Quinn, then 18, was jailed for two years for helping Mercer get rid of the murder weapon and clothes. At the time of his sentencing he was already serving a five-year sentence over gun crime, and the two-year sentence was served once his current jail term ended in 2010.

Melvin Coy, 32, was sentenced to seven years for his involvement. Coy was the first person to alert Mercer to the presence of rival Strand Gang teenagers in Croxteth. After the shooting he drove Mercer in his well-recognised green Ford Galaxy to a lockup in Kirkby, where they doused Mercer in petrol to conceal gunshot residue.

Gary Kays was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2008 for his involvement in the cover-up. He was sentenced for assisting an offender after he made the phone call to urge Mercer to confront rival gang members at the pub car park. Kays was also an accomplice to Melvin Coy when they picked up the killer after Rhys’s murder, driving him to a Kirkby lock-up and dousing him in petrol.

Dean Kelly was jailed in 2009 for four years after he was convicted of assisting an offender, two counts of possession of a firearm and one of possessing ammunition. Others jailed included a teenager known in court as Boy M, Mercer's mum Janette and Yates' parents Marie and Francis. The older defendants were all jailed for covering up their sons' heinous crimes.

Addressing cowardly Mercer as he jailed him for a minimum of 22 years, Mr Justice Irwin said: "This offence arose from the stupid, brutal gang conflict which has struck this part of Liverpool. You were caught up in that from a young age, but it is clear you gloried in it. It is wrong to let anyone glorify or romanticise this kind of gang conflict. You are not soldiers.

"You have no discipline, no training, no honour. You do not command respect. You may think you do, but that is because you cannot tell the difference between respect and fear. You are selfish, shallow criminals, remarkable only by the danger you pose to others."

Rhys family - parents Stephen and Melanie and brother Owen have largely avoided media interviews since the trial but gave their blessing to ITV drama Little Boy Blue which details the events of August 2007 and the subsequent police investigation.

Trouble continues to flare despite crackdown

While the prosecutions of the killers of both Rhys and Smith were significant successes - and came against the backdrop of a continued wall of silence with people too afraid to come forward with information - the violence continued. Trouble repeatedly flared, but gun destruction tarnished L11 again when Thompson was shot dead.

Thompson was by then an influential member of the Strand Gang and was executed right in the heart of Norris Green by two men. The attack was the first fatal shooting of 2012, not just in L11 but across Liverpool - highlighting the progress the Matrix gun and gang fighting unit had made after being set up by Merseyside Police in the wake of Rhys’s death.

Yet it also pointed to the trouble that remained linked to a small but dangerous element of the community. Thompson was one of five arrested by police over the 2004 murder of McDonald and in the wake of Smith’s murder landed himself in court for wearing “inflammatory” clothes which glorified the teen as a “True Nogsy Soldier”.

A new generation?

After Mercer and his thugs were jailed for their roles in Rhys' death and the gang violence, a vacuum was filled by "a separate outlawed tribe" who went by the name Croxteth Young Guns (CYG). The extraordinarily violent collective of street criminals were not flush with dirty money from a sophisticated drug trafficking operation. Nor did their offending seem to be about mere survival.

Their focus appeared to solely be on continuing the rivalry with the Strand Gang using extraordinarily violent means. Senior members Anthony Jewell, Mark Thomas and Barry Burke began operating across a patch stretching to the borders of Fazakerley and Kirkby. Their violence added to a particularly troubling period in Liverpool.

An alarming statistic revealed between October 2010 and March 2013, there were 266 firearms discharges in Liverpool; and 319 offences of arson with intent to endanger life. Jewell and his "soldiers" were rounded up and charged with a raft of offences on an indictment that covered six shootings, two further incidents when guns failed to fire and at least four firebomb attacks.

Not afraid to carry out violent acts and then ask questions later, the gang's firebomb and gun attacks targeted the homes of their rivals' family members. The incidents culminated in an attack on a home in Fazakerley, which was all but burned down, and later proved to be a case of mistaken identity.

They went to trial in 2013. The trial judge, Mr Justice Peter Openshaw, said his impression of the young but extraordinarily violent criminals, led by dad Jewell, was that their drug-dealing was just a side show to fund their "principle activity" of "feuding" with rivals. The courts heard suspected members of the Strand Gang had carried out attacks on them as well.

However, the judge said "these attacks fuelled the escalating tit-for-tat violence". At the end of the week-long trial, the seven members were jailed for a total of 113 years. Gang leader Jewell was jailed for 20 years, plus five years on licence.

What about now?

The convictions did not end trouble completely in Croxteth and Norris Green, with both areas experiencing serious incidents since. But as with most gang-related crime in Merseyside, street rivalries have largely been brought under control. The murder of Thompson and convictions of the new wave of Croxteth gangs was seen as a turning point for many.

A handful of brave community leaders put their heads above the parapet to offer an alternative vision for the L11 district. Speaking to the ECHO in 2019, Inspector Graeme Rooney said: "My job used to be the project to tackle gangs, so I'm aware of what it was like then. I do see a massive change and a lot of that is the community who have done a lot in the area. Some examples are the Norris Green Youth Centre, that's fantastic, they get loads of young people in."

Many of the former gang leaders and their associates either remain in prison or under tight licences. Gaps in the criminal landscape have since been occupied with more advanced criminals who have furthered their networks through things like encrypted messaging network EncroChat, before its notable hack in 2020, and the county lines model to earn money in places other than their own area.

However, feuds around Merseyside are still ongoing and sadly innocent people are still perishing in the conflicts. Exactly 15 years on from Rhys' death, nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel was shot dead in her home in nearby Dovecot following a dispute. In the same week, Sam Rimmer and Ashley Dale were killed, and before the end of the 2022, Jacqui Rutter and Elle Edwards had also been shot dead.

There were 22 gun discharges on Merseyside in 2023 marking a significant decrease on the previous year and from a decade earlier. Merseyside Police has deployed new tactics with the Clear, Hold, Build initiative introduced in parts of the region to tackle serious and organised crime.

However, the force has realised that a big part of stopping local gang violence is investing in youth schemes in notoriously troubled areas, so funds seized under the Proceeds of Crime Act coupled with central government funding have been invested to ensure youngsters have suitable opportunities and won't be sucked into gang life.

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