Plymouth shooter Jake Davison was 'obsessed with guns' even at primary school

A former classmate of Jake Davison, who shot and killed five people in the tragic mass shooting in Plymouth in 2021, has recalled in a new BBC documentary about the incident how the 22-year-old used to be "obsessed" with guns.

The chilling, one-off episode, which will air tonight (Thurs) at 9pm on BBC Three, will delve into the events leading up to Davison becoming one of the UK's most lethal killers.

His shooting spree, on August 12, 2021, which took the lives of his mother Maxine, 50, as well as Stephen Washington, 59, Kate Shepherd, 66, and father and daughter Lee and Sophie Martyn, aged 43 and three, before he finally shot himself dead, was the biggest mass shooting in Britain for a decade.

Read more:

• Plymouth shooting video shows Keyham gunman Jake Davison on evening of fatal shootings

• Plymouth shooting inquest: Timeline of August 12 in Keyham revealed to jury

And now, BBC Three has explored Davison's relationship with guns - particularly, the pump-action shotgun he owned that was taken off him following an assault incident a year before the shooting, but returned to him in July 2021, just a month before the tragic event.

In separate interviews with his former classmate, named only as Emma, and one of his teachers, named only as Jonathan, both described Davison's fascination with guns even during his school days, with Jonathan describing them as his "specialist interest".

Speaking as part of the BBC documentary, the tutor, who taught Davison at special education school, Mount Tamar, explained: "Jake was at Mount Tamar because he was definitely ASD, Autistic Spectrum Disorder. He was diagnosed fairly early, at about the age of six or seven.

"Quite quickly it would have been realised that his needs couldn't have been met in mainstream [education], and he was there because Mount Tamar is designed to meet the needs of students like him, and we were very well-trained to deal with that."

He added: "Jake's personality, which is common in many autistic people, is a level of specialist interest, which would be surprising outside a small team of experts. With Jake it was guns."

And Emma, who had known Jake from the age of around seven years old, added: "Jake was obsessed with guns. He was fixated on them. An AK-47, that's a gun that Jake used to talk about a lot.

"When I was 12, I went to America, to Disneyworld Florida, and Jake wanted us to get him a t-shirt with a gun on it, so that's what we got him."

Emma went on to describe her and Jake's school as a "behavioural" school, saying: "In order to go to that school you had to have a statement, some sort of mental health issue. It was always something that had triggered us in life - it wasn't like we were bad children out of nowhere, something had caused it.

"But we all used to be out of control. We were very naughty children. Some days it would be people on the roof, throwing stones at people, or else children screaming at the teachers."

And she recalled that Jake, specifically, used to be quick to "lose his rag", adding: "It would be hard for teachers to restrain him.

"People tried to not get on the wrong side of him, because he was strong and he could fly off the handle if he wanted. And when he did, you didn't want to face that."

Emma told the BBC that she did not keep in touch with Jake after their school days, but said that when she did see him around town: "You didn't really see him with anyone else. I never used to see him with friends. He was socially awkward, for sure."

Elsewhere in the documentary, Jonathan recalls how another teacher at Mount Tamar was later approached to provide a reference for Davison after he had left school, when he wanted to get a gun.

The tutor said: "He was given a reference by someone at Mount Tamar school - and I genuinely believe, knowing that person, that they thought that was a good thing, that it would allow Jake to pursue what had been a childhood interest. I can see how a person might think, 'Maybe that's exactly what he needs.'"

However, Jonathan also admitted that after Davison left school, he quickly became more vulnerable.

He said: "The more he stepped out of that system, he didn't have the networks and infrastructure that education has around it - safeguarding, people checking up on his issues with mental health, etc. There's no doubt that the more he was removed from that care, the more vulnerable he became."

Emma also addresses Davison's incel beliefs, saying: "How can you be so roped into that kind of life? It's crazy, it's almost like it's not even real life. How can you get so caught up in that? Surely if he had just waited it out a little bit, he would have met someone in his life.

"Obviously he got too caught up in it, and then ended up losing himself within it. If he had taken a step back a bit and found his feet a little, and been able to lead a normal life... who knows? There's always the what-ifs."

You can watch the full documentary tonight (Thurs) at 9pm on BBC Three.