Family feud may have sparked massacre

Possible motives behind English taxi driver Derrick Bird's killing spree and details about some of his 12 victims are beginning to emerge.

The 52-year-old's three-hour massacre across rural Cumbria in northeastern England may have been sparked by a family row over a will, the Telegraph reports.

Bird is thought to have tried to harm himself with two guns before being disarmed by a friend, says the Telegraph.

He is then understood to have sought medical help for his fragile mental state at a local hospital - only to be turned away.

Bird's first victims are thought to have been his twin brother David and a local solicitor, Kevin Commons.

One of the police's main lines of enquiry centres on the will of Bird's seriously ill mother, Mary, around which a row had developed. Commons may have been advising the family, says the Telegraph.

The massacre is thought to have begun on Wednesday morning local time (Wednesday evening NZ time) when Bird shot his brother and Commons near his home in Rowrah.

He is then believed to have killed two fellow taxi drivers in Whitehaven before speeding across the county and fatally shooting eight more victims - including a young farmer, an elderly woman, a cyclist and a retired man - and putting a further 25 in hospital.

Names of some of the victims have emerged. Darren Rewcastle, 43, was one of the taxi drivers Bird shot at Whitehaven, whom he had worked with for years.

The rest of the victims appear to have been unknown to Bird.

Susan Hughes, 57, was walking home from the shops in Egremont when she was shot and Jane Robinson, in her seventies, was killed while delivering shopping catalogues. 64-year-old Michael Pike was cycling when he was gunned down. Kenneth Fishburn, a retired security worker in his seventies, was also killed.

Garry Purdham was a farmer and league player aged 31 who had two young children. He was trimming hedges when he was shot.

Other names the Telegraph reports as among the dead include Spike Dixon and a couple in their sixties, Jimmy and Jennifer Jackson.

Meanwhile, the fallout from the massacre spread as far as soap opera Coronation Street, which was pulled off the air in England on Wednesday night due to the unfortunate timing of a plot line about a fatal gun siege.

"In light of tragic events, last night's episode of Coronation Street was postponed," a spokesman for the ITV network said on Thursday, the day after the killing spree.

The popular soap was this week due to feature a siege involving guns, resulting in two characters dying, after a convicted killer escapes from jail.

Coronation Street was replaced with a repeat of a comedy programme on Wednesday.

It had been scheduled to broadcast six episodes, instead of the usual five, throughout the week as the plot unfolded on screen.

The spokesman said the network would announce revised episode dates and times in due course.

- NZ Herald staff