A gun gang planned a targeted attack on a dad of a notorious northwest gun firearms supplier.
Charlie Cullen's son Anthony Cullen, 33, is currently serving a 27 year prison sentence after he was jailed in 2019 for fronting a prominent trafficking ring.
Prosecutors once described Anthony Cullen as a "ruthless and arrogant figure, who was determined to carry on supplying Class A and B drugs despite plainly being aware of police scrutiny of his activities; he simply changed his tactics..."
The Warrington man was at the head of a significant organised crime group which was finally rumbled when a lethal arsenal including an AK47 assault rifle, a pump-action shotgun, three handguns and a silencer, were discovered and seized by police.
It was the biggest firearms seizure in Cheshire Police's history and revealed the weapon enterprise running alongside a lucrative cocaine trafficking network on a scale more commonly associated with the highest echelons of Liverpool or Manchester's underworlds.
Now, following last week's conviction of three men, two from Liverpool, for shooting the wrong man after getting orders from a controlling gangland figure living in Spain, some of the implications of the criminal rivalries across Warrington and Merseyside can be reported on.
On April 24, last year, police believe Aaron Bretherton, from Everton, tried to gun down Charlie Cullen.
However, when the shooter, disguised as a pizza delivery worker, knocked at the door of a property on Sinclair Avenue in Longford the man who answered said Mr Cullen had moved away and no longer lived there.
Shooting of an innocent man
Around two hours earlier, 24-year-old Bretherton, aided by "fixer" Lewis Fitzpatrick, 26, and driver Anthony Morris, 23, had arrived in Warrington in a white Transit van from Liverpool, and pulled up on Poplars Avenue in Orford.
The three men were carrying out the orders of Jamie Rothwell, an alleged crime gang boss, dishing out deadly instructions from his base in Barcelona, Spain.
The Salford man was desperate to deliver punishment to Liam Byrne Jnr, a once convicted heroin dealer, and had offered up a £10,000 bonus for anyone willing to take on the job.
Serving solider Bretherton had obliged, armed with pizza boxes, and when the occupant at the Poplars Avenue house answered, at around 8.50pm, he fired four shots.
The victim was David Barnes, the 55-year-old stepdad of Byrne, he suffered life-changing injuries as a result.
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In the days or weeks leading up to the shooting, Mr Byrne Jnr had received a warning from police that someone was preparing to attack him.
These details and Rothwell's orders were laid bare in incriminating Encrochat phone messages intercepted by police.
The hit on Mr Cullen had been planned originally on April 23, but it was called off at the last minute when an accomplice, using the Encrochat handle "Ballsniffer", had problems with his vehicle clutch so the attack was postponed for 24 hours.
After visits to both houses were done, Rothwell, using the Encrochat handle "Livelong", boasted: "I done two same time."
Conversations quickly revealed, however, Liam Byrne Jnr was unscathed and Charlie Cullen was now based at a different address, and so too, unharmed.
Police later found a Glock 19 9mm handgun in the extractor of the cooker in Bretherton's apartment and ammunition and a magazine located in a fan in the bathroom.
But tests of the bullet casings found outside Mr Barnes' address showed the gun at Bretherton's home was not the one used to shoot the 55-year-old.
Verdicts
Following a three week trial at Liverpool Crown Court:
Bretherton, Fitzpatrick and Morris were found guilty of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm to 26-year-old Mr Byrne Jnr at Liverpool Crown Court on Friday.
Bretherton had already admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent of Mr Barnes, possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and possession of a firearm.
They will be sentenced at a later date.
Who was Anthony Cullen?
Anthony Cullen was head of the trafficking ring which was eventually smashed by police in Operation Samurai after an 18 month probe.
Using trusted accomplices, like right hand man Robert Bibby and 'armourer' Chris Houghton, he supplied guns and drugs to smaller gangs and sent men to threaten anyone who owed a debt.
Cullen made plans to flee to Portugal after his associates began to be arrested, but abandoned the escape and carried on his business.
He and his gang were later locked up for a combined 185 years in prison at Liverpool Crown Court.
Police seized a total of £205,000 cash and three quarters of a kilo of cocaine during a series of strikes.
Lists seized in early 2017, found to be marked with Cullen and Bibby's fingerprints, revealed estimated profits for two months alone in the region of £571,000.
Detectives believed Cullen had 16 phone numbers attributed to him alone.
Alongside the cocaine and cannabis business, Cullen was mired in the supply of lethal firearms to other underworld figures, some of them in Liverpool.
One gun was used in a shooting in Rose Avenue, Bootle, on August 20 2015.
Weapons seized included a Russian AK47, a J.C Higgins model 20 pump-action shotgun, a Beretta self-loading pistol, an antique Second World War Enfield .38 revolver and a FEG automatic pistol - alongside a silencer and dozens of bullets.
Last April's attempted gun attack at the presumed home of Charlie Cullen, ordered by Rothwell, was hugely significant to police in Cheshire because, despite Anthony's jailing in January 2019, the gang's name clearly remained of relevance in the northwest's gangland underworld.
And it signalled how the likes of Rothwell, repeatedly named in last week's recent trial in Liverpool as the catalyst for the Orford shooting, was determined to send a message to the family about his intended dominance in the world of major drugs supply and gun crime.
How gangs are changing Warrington
In the last 24 months, residents in Warrington have become increasingly fearful over how their town has given rise to more gangland-type incidents.
Much of Cheshire is dominated by countryside and rural towns where serious and gang-related crime is uncommon.
But in Warrington, where the town's crooks have only occasionally flirted with the world of guns and major drug trafficking, serious organised crime has now started to take a root in some of its communities in recent years.
Among the raft of serious organised offences was an improvised explosive device left in the garden of a home, on nearby Birtles Road, also Orford, in April 2020.
Another note of high alarm to police was an incident which saw shots fired at a former boxer in Monks Place, Warrington, in January 2020.
A gunman wearing a high-visibility vest fired several discharges before leaving in a black Audi, as the car was later torched in a nearby street.
