Twenty-seven-year-old Simon Brown had been attending a Christmas party at a community center in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England on December 25th, 1999. By the time he left the function with his friends and cousins, it was nearly six o’clock on the morning of Boxing Day.
As Simon exited the building, he was ambushed by a group of men, one of whom shot him once in the head with a pistol before fleeing. The victim was killed instantly.
An investigation into Simon’s background yielded no evidence that he had been involved with gangs or drugs, and authorities speculated he may have angered some gang member without knowing it, and this individual set out for revenge.
The area of Manchester where the shooting occurred was known as something of a hub of gang activity, and two other shootings took place in the vicinity only months after Simon’s murder.
In the first case, seventeen-year-old Gabriel Egharevba was killed by a single gunshot to the head on January 14th, 2000. The assailant had fired the weapon from a motorcycle. Gabriel was not known to have had any gang involvement.
In the second instance, a twenty-five-year-old member of the Gooch Close gang named Martin Bennett was killed by a shot to the chest on July 31st, 2000. According to police, the victim had been involved in a minor scuffle outside a newsagent’s shop shortly before the killing.
The slaying of Simon Brown remains unsolved as of August 2024, as do the other two murders.
Crime Immemorial 