Police's "catastrophic failure" in Keyham tragedy

Families' devastating assessment

A jury has decided that the five victims of Keyham killer Jake Davison were unlawfully killed.

Their families have described how "breathtaking incompetence and failings" by police led to Davison being granted a firearms license.

It led to the deaths of his mother Maxine, 51, and four others gunned down in a shooting spree. Sophie Martyn, aged three, her father Lee, 43, Stephen Washington, 59 and Kate Shepherd, 66, were all killed.

Outside Exeter Racecourse, where the inquest was held into the August 2021 tragedy, a joint statement read on behalf of the Martyn, Washington and Shepherd families said the shooting "was an act of pure evil" and that they had been "hopelessly failed by the system."

They said: "We now know this act of evil was facilitated and enabled by a series of failings and incompetence from the people and organisations that are supposed to keep us safe" and that the evidence revealed "a consistent story of individual failures, breathtaking incompetence and systemic failings within every level of the firearms licensing unit of he Devon and Cornwall Police force."

The statement continued: "It is beyond us how Davison, a man with a known history of violence, mental health issues, and with no real need to own a firearm, was granted a licence to possess a gun in the first place."

The senior coroner for Plymouth, Ian Arrow, who oversaw the inquest, said" "There was a serious failure by Devon and Cornwall Police's firearms and explosive licensing unit in granting and later failing to revoke the perpetrator's shotgun licence."

The police force referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct. They have said three officers have a case to answer for misconduct.