The Newport Shooting Week In Week Out

I had no doubt in my mind that Darren was capable of killing me.

Darren Williams walked into a hairdressers and started shooting.

He says "I love you Rachel. "And then the gun went off. Tonight, the

family reveal the story behind the shooting. There's more than just

Darren walking no a hairdressers, pulling out a gun and shooting.

gunman killed himself, but just weeks later, so did his teenage son.

The scream, the scream that comes from the bottom of your soul. You

scream. It's a sad tale. The whole thing appals me. Now questions are

being asked about how it could have happened. This is a tragedy for

awful us and a failure by all of us. I believe that he deserves to have

his story told and we need to look very carefully at all the

The 19th August started as a normal Friday in Newport. Business as

usual on Malpas Road, one of the main routes into the city. Rachel

Williams was working as a hairdressers in the local salon.

Across the road at the vets, there was a busy day ahead. Friday

started as a pretty normal day. Lots of excitement for the practice.

We had some new staff on board. That was how our day started really.

92-year-old Connie Evans was getting her hair done. I'd had a

perm. It was all looking so nice. And then in a split second, I turns

my head and there's a man. This great big man came through the door.

And I said "Gosh he's never going to have his hair cut." Darren

Williams, who was 6'7" and 22 stone went into the hairdressers where

his estranged wife Rachel was working, armed with a double

barreled shot gun. He lunged across the table and caught hold of Rachel.

He bishbashed her around the head with the gun. She fell down. He

says, "I love you Rachel." Then the gun went off. I turned my back on

it. He fired another shot. That's when I caught it. I could hear

sirens in the distance. I could see a woman collapsing outside of the

hairdressers. As I went inside, I could see Rachel on the floor. I

could see that she'd been shot. She'd been hit in a pretty bad way.

You don't know whether you're going to be help. You don't know what

you're going to find. Of course, you don't know whether someone's

going to come back and shoot you. Darren Williams had dumped the gun

and fled. He had injured three women. His estranged wife, the

salon owner and pensioner Connie. Rachel was rushed to hospital with

serious leg injuries. The 45-year- old was missing. Gwent Police began

a massive search operation for the gunman. People had said they didn't

know where Darren had gone and whether he'd got more weapons and

whether he was coming back to the area. News of the shooting stunned

the community in Newport. Darren and Rachel had been together for 18

years and married for five years. They lived in Brynglas with their

son Jack and Rachel's son Josh. They had recently separated. 39-

year-old Rachel told us there was a history of domestic abuse. We've

spoke ton her about this programme, so we can tell her story, but she

doesn't want to appear on camera. Her words are spoken by an actress.

I did report some of the incidents to the police, but he was always

sorry and promised it wouldn't happen again. I tried to leave

Darren several times offer the last three years. The month before the

shooting, she says things came to a head. The final straw was in July,

when he tried, for the third time in a month, to commit suicide. He

also tried to strangle me. This time, I knew there would be no

going back. After leaving him, I reported the assault to the police.

They took several days to arrest him, as they wanted to do so with

armed response units. During this time I had no protection from the

police. On the 12th August, Darren appeared at Caerphilly magistrates

charged with assaulting Rachel. The court bailed him on the condition

he didn't go within three miles of the family home or contact Rachel

or her sons. So banned from the home, Darren spent the following

week in Cwmbran with his sister and her partner Wayne Davies.

The couple say he was struggling to cope with the break down of his

marriage, but on the morning of the shooting, there was no indication

of what he was about to do. Darren had a shower, got dressed. He got

his gym bag. I got his clothes. I put his clothes in his bag. I was

just waving goodbye to him and that was it really. That was the last

time I saw him. The next time she spoke to him was minutes before the

shooting. I just had a call from Darren and he just said "I love you

." That was it. Shortly after the call, Darren Williams entered the

hairdressers and started shooting. For his 16-year-old son Jack, the

horror that his dad had shot his mum. The 19th, that day, that

evening, we were just all waiting here. But obviously he was

concerned about his dad as well, even though Darren obviously had

done what he'd done. It's still his dad. He needed to know if his dad

was OK. We wanted his mum to be safe. He wanted his dad to be safe.

We said both of them should be apart and that's it. But he just

wanted them to be OK. But six hours after the shooting, Darren Williams

was found hanged in an area of woods known as Brickyard Lane,

about a mile from the hairdressers. The shooting brought the media

spotlight to Newport. The next day, facing cameras, Darren's family

told their side of the story. Darren has suffered for the last

few weeks due to the traumatic break up of his marriage and

professionally needed professional medical attention. We feel this was

not given and subsequently this has failed Darren. Jack had to deal

with the death of his dad and the trauma of the shooting. His mum was

still recovering. I was obviously concerned about Jack coping. For

the first week I was in hospital. I had four operations in one week, so

I had a lot to deal with myself. the weeks that followed, Jack

stayed with his dad's family. Relations between the two sides of

his family were becoming increasingly difficult. The

teenagers was struggling deal with the situation. Darren's mum Barbara

Smilie says Jack had been close to his dad. They had this saying, this

bond together, that they were one person, real, real strong. They had

a saying "We are one. You are me and I am you." The the father and

son shared a love of the outdoors and hunting. Those who knew him say

the former Newport high pupil was quiet. His best friend was James

Avery. We used to speak every day, see each other a lot, really close.

Like family, really. The teenagers had known each other since nursery.

James says Jack used to confide in him. For the first week, he seemed

different. He seemed sad. But then, I don't know, he seemed kind of all

right afterwards. He kept having dreams. He didn't like the dreams.

Was he very close to his dad? he was. They used to go hunting

quite a lot. He always used to mess about together. As the reality of

what had happened was sinking in, for those involved, there was shock,

anger, but also questions, how could it have happened? Darren's

estranged wife spent a month in hospital. She's given us these

photos that show the damage to her leg and face. Her words are spoken

by an actress. I've had to have several operations. The last one

lasting nine hours which gave me a complete new knee. I had over 70

stitches in my leg and my calf muscle brought to just under my

knee to fill the hole. 37 pellets remain in my leg. I have severe

bruising and swelling to my head due to my head being kicked and

stamped on. If there is pain in the future, amputation may still be a

consideration. Rachel's told us the violence had been building for

His mum Barbara says Darren could be unpredictable. He was no angel.

He always had a short temper. We coped with that. He was very

remorseful if you were at the end of his temper, "Oh, mum, I'm so

sorry. Why did I do that?" He would be in tears. In 2004, Darren

Williams was jailed for four months for a firearms conviction, after

police discovered a stun gun, a pistol, machete and bullets at his

home. A week before the shooting, Darren appeared in court for

assaulting Rachel. The Crown Prosecution Service argued that he

should be remanded in custody on the grounds that he would cause

harm or fear to another person. His estranged wife Rachel maintains

that if he'd been refused bail, the shooting would not have happened.

But the court did release him. A trial date was set for October.

Police were aware that he had a firearms conviction and a history

of violence. Therefore all this should have been put before the

court and taken into consideration. Paula Hardy is the chief executive

of Welsh women's aid. She believes mistakes were made in this case.

don't think he should have been given bail. We're balancing an

individual's liberty against the safety of another person. From a

bail perspective it's very unlikely that the views of the victim will

be taken into account when bail is set. Rachel says Darren breached

his bail and that she told the police. Then the day before the

shooting, the bail conditions were relaxed to cover just the street

where Rachel lived. I had no doubt in my mind that Darren was capable

of killing me. In fact, family members actually voiced their

concerns to the police and said that if Darren was released, they

would be signing my death certificate. I think there are

failings. I think there are things that should have been done, could

have been done differently and had they been done differently, there

would be a very different scenario. It's about time we started looking

at much more early intervention, that we take the whole situation

around domestic abuse and develop our understanding around the nature

of domestic abuse and how that escalates. Jocelyn Davis is the

Assembly Member for South Wales east. She has concerned about the

way the case was dealt with. family were taking this crisis very

seriously. I'm not convinced that everybody else was, because we know

that even the bail conditions were changed. We know that he had an

interest in guns and that he was on the edge and losing control. His

wife must have been living in fear. She took him very seriously. We put

the concerns to the Ministry of the concerns to the Ministry of

Darren had a long history of mental health problems and took daily

doses of antidepressants. Rachel said she'd tried to get her husband

help. His younger brother Wayne had also killed himself when he was 21.

His mother Barbara and her husband Bill live in Spain. But in the

weeks before the shooting, they'd been home to Newport to visit

Darren after he attempted to kill himself. His family say his mental

health was deteriorating and alarm health was deteriorating and alarm

bells should have rung. With the fact his brother took his own life

and the fact that Darren has done this, and not just the drugs, the

cutting of his wrists as well, that has to put you into a high risk

category. That's not just someone saying it's a cry for help. That's

silly nonsense. Here we have a high-risk situation. I don't know

that the authorities involved at that point really recognised it

properly. It escalated at the end. He certainly didn't get the help

after the overdoses, definitely. His family say when Darren was

discharged from hospital, he was given an appointment to see a

psychiatrist, but he never made it. It was for a month after the

shooting. I was like, where's the people that help. I thought someone

took an overdose, there was follow up. But there was nobody, when I

certainly came back from Spain, there was nobody there. Bill

Walden-Jones runs the mental health charity Hafal. He has questions

about the way the case was handled. There's obviously a very troubled

man, who had been facing difficulties for many, many years.

He might not have reached that position of desperation had he got

good support, in particular, good quality psychotherapy, much earlier

in his life. In the weeks leading up to the shooting, Darren's family

paint a picture of a man becoming increasingly unstable. The police

had been called a number of times, but his family feel the authorities

didn't fully recognise the distress he was in. The GPs have input,

Social Services, hospitals, police have input, etc. How well do they

communicate. What are the channels for communicating in situations

like this, so the case comes to the core and gets flagged up. The

people who probably had greatest awareness of Darren and Darren's

state of mind at any point in time were the police. I reckon they

would be the centre of the whole thing. Having got to the final

events of his life, there's also a short-term issue here about

services communicating effectively with each other and ensuring that

even though he was going through what no doubt was a necessary

process with the criminal justice system, nevertheless needed a lot

of personal support as he went through that stressful period of

his life. We contacted Gwent Police with the family's concerns. They

said they're unable to provide answers at this time because of a

number of ongoing inquiries. The Independent Police Complaints

Commission is investigating the contact Gwent Police had with

Darren Williams before his death. The shooting didn't just impact on

the lives of the people who were there. Darren and Rachel's son Jack

felt his world had been turned upside down. His grandmother says

he was always a sensitive boy. Known as the little sparrow because

of his mild temperament. Darren called him a little bird when he

was born. He looked like a little one in the nest. His aunt says in

the days after the shooting, the 16-year-old was struggling cope.

was quiet. A couple of days after, he, he wanted to go back up his

house and unfortunately Jack sent me a text message saying, I'm sorry,

I can't live without him. Then he cut his wrists. Jack was take ton

hospital. He was visited by a police family liaison officer.

Meanwhile, his mum was still undergoing treatment herself.

was obviously not coping as he attempted to cut his wrist, whilst

at the family home. The cut wasn't deep and this was definitely a cry

for help. Jack returned to stay with his aunt, but there was

increasing tension between the two sides of his family. Then on the

5th September, following an incident between Jack and other

members of his mother's family, he was arrested by police. I certainly

do think that he went in with overly aggressive tactics on a 16-

year-old boy who had just been traumatised through the loss of his

father. Jack was released on police bail. The family say he had never

been this trouble with the police before. A few days after the arrest,

a social worker came to see him. After the meeting, the Newport

Social Services report said Jack has experienced great loss and

bereavement, made all the more difficult due to ongoing issues

between family members and Jack being caught in the middle.

The report stated that Jack felt he'd had enough support. Because

he'd left school and was 16. He was treated as an adult. The report

concluded, "There is no further role for Newport Social Services at

this time. The case will be closed." But his family wasn't

happy with the decision. I phoned the social worker. She told me

she'd done an assessment. And he was quite in control of his life. I

pointed out the trauma he'd gone through before Darren had died. I

pointed to the trauma that him and Darren were one. I said let me tell

you, what you see is not what's going on inside that boi. Boy.

had a couple of counselling sessions. His mum believes that

wasn't enough. Jack should have been given help. Given the

circumstances surrounding Jack, 16 is far too young for Social

Services to say they cannot become involved. Dr Tegwyn Williams is a

leading psychiatrist. He led a review into the Bridgend sucides.

He said such tragedies can be difficult to predict. People will

have made a judgment, which is incredibly difficult. You have to

recall professionals make these judgments and the stakes are so

high. Nobody wants to get it wrong. In every judgment call, there is a

risk. Sometimes it goes wrong. Jack's family feel, in his case, it

did go wrong. All these things have happened to him in a matter of

weeks. You know, he, it should have been an ongoing support for Jack.

Your worst nightmare, your father has shot your mother. Then gone on

to kill himself. I just can't imagine what that boy must have

been going through. Here's somebody who is vulnerable and who needs

immediate emotional and practical support, definitely intervention

needed for that young man. He harmed himself. That is big, big

alarm call, I think, for anybody, that things are not well with this

person and how could they be under those circumstances. It would be

impossible for him to have been coping well, impossible. On the

26th September, five weeks after the shooting and his dad's death,

16-year-old Jack went missing. was going to walk through Brynglas

woods, which he went regular because that's where we scattered

Darren's ashes. Jack was supposed to be meeting a friend. He hadn't

turned up. I thought, it will be all right. He's OK. So I rang Jack.

There was no answer. I thought, that's strange. That evening, Jack

was found hanged in woods near the spot where his father Darren died

and where his ashes had been scattered. You scream a scream that

comes from the bottom of your soul. You scream this... I just screamed

and screamed and screamed. Has Jack gone then? Getting myself prepared

to go through another funeral within four weeks. Hundreds

attended Jack's service. His mum, still recovering from the shooting,

had to face the loss of her son. always had an extreme lip close

relationship with Jack. Wherever I was, Jack was never far behind.

Without the support from my family and friends, I would not have been

able to cope. As well as mourners, police were at the funeral. There

because of the increasing tension between the two sides of Jack's

family. Jack loved his mum and he loved his dad. But Jack was being

torn. He was a street wise boy. Sometimes he was the dad and Darren

was the little boy. He was the calming influence with Darren.

best friend James was one of the pallbearer. I felt sick, didn't

know what to think really. It all happened too fast. I was just in

shock really. It was horrible. Amongst the grief, Jack's family

are looking for answers. There's a bitter irony. Next year, his care

may have been handled differently, because of changes being made in

Wales under a new mental health measure. The service may have been,

would have been better if this would have happened in 18 months.

Psychiatrist Tegwyn Williams welcomes the changes. Up until

recently, you were a child when you were in school and you were

considered an adult and dealt with by adult services if you were not

in school. Hopefully, that's going to be changing and that from a

health point of view, certainly a mental health point of view,

children will go up to the age of 18. We contacted the health board

with the concerns the family have raised. In a statement they said,

"In these tragic circumstances, our thoughts are of course with the

families affected. The health board does not comment on the details of

any individual cases." Newport Social Services said there will be

a review. "It will examine the role of all agencies and their work with

the family, with the aim of identifying any learning for the

future." The future for Rachel Williams is uncertain. She may

still lose her leg. I can't put full weight on my leg yet as there

is extensive swelling in my leg. I'm taking pain killers at night as

often the pain wakes me. I use crutchs and a wheelchair to get

around. Recovery will definitely be a very long, slow procedure. Other

lives were also changed forever that day. You can't believe

anything could happen down on Malpas Road. I mean, we're just

ordinary people having our hair done, aren't we? For widow Connie,

there's still shock that she's been the victim of a shooting. It does

still frighten me really. Sometimes when I'm sitting here at night I,

oohh, you know, is that him? If it had hit me in the chest, most

probably it would have killed me. I am lucky to be alive. The very fact

that Darren Williams was on bail and able to do what he did has led

to calls for major changes to the way domestic violence cases are

handled in Wales. I think absolutely we should be looking for

a change in the Bail Act and what we should be saying is we need to,

particularly in cases where domestic abuse occurs, that we

should absolutely be taking into account the views of the victims

and previous history and ensurelinging -- ensuring the

safety of that person. Rachel Williams is left to grieve for her

son. She has a permanent reminder of what happened. This has been an

absolute nightmare for myself and my family. Not only have with dealt

with an attempt to kill me, but also the tragedy of Jack's death.

Flowers and tributes have been left in the woods where he died. It's

become a place of comfort for those who knew him. But as well as grief,

they're left with anger. For me, this tragedy is just going to be

pull add part for the next how many months the inquest is going to take.

It's just going to be raw. You've just got to endure it and try to be

strong. For the people who have been hurt, we spoke about this so

many times, we spoke with Jack, the family, horrific. Inquests into

both Darren and Jack's deaths have been opened and adjourned. Jocelyn

Davis feels the fact one tragedy led to another needs to be fully

investigated. There is nothing that can bring this young man back, but

I think that this is a story that we should all learn from. And I

hope that the children's commissioner will also be prepared