A Brit dad turned AK47 gunman went on a nine hour rampage months after losing his job leaving his city in a state of fear and mayhem. Leslie Garrett began the series of terrifying events at the Showcase Cinema where he used to work and between the evening of January 3 into the early hours of the morning on January 4 last year, a horror manhunt played out on the streets of Liverpool.
The 49-year-old was wearing flip flops and a long green overcoat with his hood up was armed with an AK47 assault rifle as he opened fire in a newsagents before heading to the pub for a pint and showing the weapon off to fellow drinkers.
The dad had worked at the Showcase as a security guard for many years but lost his job three months previously when his drinking problem got on top of him. Now, he was discharging gunshots into the air outside as his ex-colleagues ducked for cover.
Only a month before he brought carnage and chaos to the city, Garrett dialled 999 on December 5, 2023 and told a call handler “my time here is done”. Sadly, nothing was done. In the autumn of last year, Garrett had been homeless and living in his car after being kicked out by a family member due to his self-confessed “awful” behaviour. And, in October, he was sacked from the Showcase Cinema, reports the ECHO.
On January 3 Garrett argued with his partner and began drinking rum at around 1pm. Over the next 24 hours he would down a bottle-and-a-half leading to the moment he set foot in Sangha’s off-licence, in Lower House Lane, Norris Green. Amandeep Singh had been working alone as a shop assistant that evening and was standing behind the till of the empty store at around 7.30pm.
CCTV later released to the press showed Garrett enter, demand “come on, money” before revealing the gun and firing a single shot into the plastic protective screen at the counter. Mr Singh, who initially believed the incident to be an elaborate joke, fled to the stock room in fear while Garrett quickly left the store empty handed.
He hopped into his Ford Focus and made his way to the Western Approaches pub. He ordered a drink and began chatting to other drinkers at the bar. He later led two customers outside and showed them inside the boot of his car. After realising what was inside, they quickly backed away.
Garrett produced the gun to them before getting back in his car and driving away again this time bound for the Showcase Cinema. Arriving shortly after 8.45pm, he found Danielle Mea working as a cashier behind the ticket desk and Philip Smith on duty as security.
Like Mr Singh before them, they too believed that what was unfolding in front of them was a prank. The guard, thinking the weapon to be an imitation firearm, responded to the gunman pointing the rifle in the face of his colleague by saying: “Drop the peashooter and don’t point it at her.”
Garrett then fired for a second time, this time into the air. He continued discharging the weapon several times as he left through the back of the building, with 12 bullet casings ultimately being recovered from the scene. The cinema was placed on lockdown with moviegoers stunned to find armed police swarming outside.
Garrett left at speed and went to a Go Local store but this time the rifle remained in the car. He picked up two bottles of vodka on credit before leaving without a fuss. He went to his mum’s address in Ternhall Road, Fazakerley, before moving on to his partner Jennifer Forshaw’s home in Malpas Road, Croxteth, at around 10pm.
It was here that Garrett let off the gun a third time, with one resident later reporting how her children were awoken by the loud bangs. The mum called the police and was warned to lock her doors and switch her lights off. By the time officers arrived, Garrett had gone.
Ms Forshaw told them her partner had fired the gun into the night’s sky unprompted, having kept the weapon stashed at her address. And there it was discovered by the police, alongside the huge collection of ammunition under her mattress. Garrett, meanwhile, returned to his mum’s house. Shortly after 4.30am, a team of 16 firearms officers, two negotiators and a dog handler arrived en masse in ballistically-protected Land Rovers.
His mum answered the door and was instructed to leave at gunpoint. Garrett then presented himself, “agitated and aggressive” and dressed only in a blue t-shirt and his boxer shorts. When instructed to surrender he simply replied: “F*** off d***head.” He was then tasered in order to prevent him from arming himself or barricading himself within the property. He fell to the floor and, some nine hours after it had begun, his astonishing crime spree was at an end.
Garrett was sentenced to 14 years’ jail days shy of his 50th birthday. He was also handed an additional four years on licence. Sentencing him, Judge David Aubrey said Garrett embarked on a “campaign of terror and fear and causing mayhem, during which many lives were potentially put at risk”.
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