Thirty-four-year-old Craig Mirfield was a car dealer and lived in Gipton, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.
On March 15th, 2000, Craig was parking his car near a phone booth not far from his residence when he apparently spotted someone who he saw meant him harm. He attempted to quickly reverse the vehicle and flee the area, but the perpetrator approached and opened fire, shooting Craig in the upper body or head at point-blank range. The victim was taken to the nearest hospital, but died soon afterward from his injuries.
The motive behind the murder was unknown, though it was speculated that it could be related to a recent rash of shootings in the same vicinity. On March 11th, for example, a doorman in Moortown was hit in the leg in a drive-by shooting, and another man was injured in a Chapeltown shooting on March 17th. Ten days after that, a Seacroft man was shot in his home. And on April 14th, a thirty-three-year-old man named Frank Birley was killed and a seventeen-year-old boy wounded in yet another shooting, this one in Meanwood.
Whether all these crimes are linked to the death of Craig Mirfield is uncertain, and though a man was subsequently tried for the slaying, the case against him was dropped after two of the key witnesses proved to be unreliable. The seemingly random murder remains a mystery more than twenty years later.
Crime Immemorial 