A seven-year-old boy and his mother were shot on their doorstep in a bungled gangland hit during an “explosion of violence” in Salford, a court has heard.
Christian Hickey Jr was shot in the leg, as was his mother, Jayne Hickey, by a gunman intending to murder her husband, a jury was told.
Paul Greaney QC, prosecuting, said members of the so-called A-Team gang were hunting for the youngster’s father, Chris Hickey, but “something went wrong”.
Instead, he said, they lured the schoolboy and his mother to their front door before opening fire in a major escalation of violence between rival groups in 2015.
Chris Hickey was a friend of Salford gang leader Michael Carroll, the jury heard, who was involved in a series of tit-for-tat attacks with another gang, the A-Team, led by a man named Stephen Britton.
Members of the rival gangs had been close friends a year earlier, the court heard, with the jury shown pictures of the men posing together on nights out. However from those “images of friendship, hatred was to emerge”, said Greaney.
Hickey was at home with his wife and son when there was a knock on the window shortly before 9.25pm on 12 October, the jury heard.
Jayne Hickey opened the door, with her son close behind, when a man standing at the end of the drive shouted: “Is your husband in?” She replied: “One sec,” then heard the man say something like “nah nah”, the court heard.
A gunman then appeared and opened fire. He continued shooting even as Jayne Hickey slammed the door, the court heard, seriously injuring both mother and son.
Opening the case at the start of the trial of eight men, Greaney told the jury: “Both mother and son had been shot in the legs, causing serious injuries, and both required extensive hospital treatment, but survived.
“The prosecution case is that what happened that night was a plan to kill. In all probability Chris Hickey was the target, but something went wrong.”
The handgun used to shoot the Hickeys had been used six months earlier to shoot a man named Jamie Rothwell at a car wash near Wigan on 30 March 2015, Greaney said.
Rothwell, a friend of a rival gang member, fortuitously survived the attack as a bullet narrowly missed his internal organs as it passed through his upper body, the court heard.
Jayne Hickey later identified the man she spoke to as Carne Thomasson, an established member of the A-Team gang who was arrested with Britton and others with a loaded handgun in Spain in February 2016.
Greaney said “only a fool” would think that the men’s heavily armed presence in Spain was unconnected to the fact that Carroll, “with whom they were in a violent feud”, was living there at the time.
Pictures obtained by police showed members of the A-Team gang making “A” hand signs; in others, young women had “A-Team” written across their breasts and pubic areas, the court was told.
“Sadly, for the people of Salford and beyond, this was not mere posturing – rather it demonstrated a real appetite for violence,” said Greaney.
Thomasson, 28, Christopher Hall, 49, Aldaire Warmington, 32, and John Thomasson, 49, all deny conspiracy to murder and perverting the course of justice.
James Coward, 22, Dominic Walton, 26, and Lincoln Warmington, 32, deny perverting the course of justice in relation to the disposal of an Audi car after the Hickey shootings.
Jacob Harrison, 26, has admitted conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm to Rothwell after he was shot and injured at a car wash near Wigan on 30 March 2015.
John Kent, 54, denies the same charge and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice for the Rothwell shooting.
The defendants, each flanked by a prison officer, sat in the dock watching from behind reinforced glass as the prosecution opened its case. The trial, expected to last seven weeks, continues.
