Guardian: Hell's Angel killed by hitman travelling at 70mph, say police

[133724]

Duncan Campbell
Wednesday August 15, 2007
The Guardian

The hitman who killed a Hell's Angel biker on the M40 on Sunday was travelling at around 70mph when he fired the fatal shot, police said yesterday.

The killing was carefully planned and executed, it emerged, as biker friends of the dead man vowed to avenge his murder. Gerard Michael Tobin, 35, a Canadian mechanic who had been living in England for 10 years, was killed with a single shot from a handgun as he headed home from last weekend's Bulldog Bash at Long Marston airfield, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Mr Tobin, who worked for a Harley Davidson garage close to his home in Mottingham, south London, did not have a criminal record, according to police, and had nothing in his past to indicate why he might be targeted. Mr Tobin, with two Polish biker companions, was driving south on the motorway when a green Rover 620 pulled out of a layby just before junction 15. A gunman, one of at least three men in the car, fired two shots, one of which hit him in the back of the head just below his helmet. He fell from his Harley Davidson Softail Night Train FXSTB which travelled a further 200 yards.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,2148869,00.html

[Breeze54]

1. That sucks!

I hope they find the killer!

[The Vinyl Ripper]

2. I wonder if he had his green wings? n/t

[Kagemusha]

3. Hey, hitting a moving target's easier if you're trailing right behind it.

Note the shot that hit was in the back of the head... makes an impressive-sounding headline, but it's not so much technically impressive as brazen.

[MADem]

4. Uh, oh.... so much for the "no gun crime" business. Hopefully this is not a trend.

It seems to be, though, even though it is still rare in UK.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/crimeandpunishment/story/0,,2147279,00.html