A survivor has told how he dived like “Superman” to escape a bullet at the moment he realised that Derrick Bird was levelling the gun towards him to shoot.
Witnesses recalled the panic at the taxi rank at Whitehaven, Cumbria, shortly before 10.30am on June 2 last year as the killer pulled up to blast Darren Rewcastle, 43, in the face, killing him instantly.
Bird then turned his attention to Donald Reid, 57, a veteran taxi driver, shooting him in the back and then getting out of his Citroën Picasso people carrier with his rifle to stalk him.
At one point Mr Reid, crawling on his hands and knees, looked back to see Bird standing only four or five steps behind, seemingly intent on finishing him off. He was diverted only when a fellow taxi driver shouted from across the street.
Witnesses to the carnage told the inquest into those who died in the West Cumbria shootings that the scene unfolding before their eyes was so bizarre that they thought it was part of a game, and that the shots were blanks.
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It was only when they spotted that the victim’s jaw had been blown away and the growing pool of blood spreading beneath his head that they realised that Bird, until then a seemingly quiet, balding middle-aged man, had turned into a killer.
Mr Reid, a Liverpudlian, told the inquest at Workington, Cumbria: “Until then I would have described Derrick Bird as a mate. The only thing he has ever done to me is shoot me in the back.”
He recalled how Bird arrived at the back of the taxi rank to shout at Mr Rewcastle, who was emerging from the nearby sandwich shop with a cup of tea: “Here, I want you.”
He watched as Mr Rewcastle, a man he readily admitted could be a “pain”, leant into the passenger window.
“He just shot him through the open window,” he said. “Darren was going backwards. He [Bird] leans forward and shoots him again. He was standing there at point-blank range. I thought if it is a game, and blanks were being fired, then it could be dangerous.”
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Mr Reid noticed that Bird had thrown the weapon on to the passenger seat and was drawing the people carrier closer to the spot where he was standing at the head of the rank.
“He picked up the weapon and pointed it at me, almost in slow motion,” said Mr Reid. “I thought, ‘He is going to shoot me’ so I turned and dived like Superman between the cars.
“I was not quick enough. Just as I was taking off he shot me in the back.”
Mr Reid tried to stand up but could not, so he tried to crawl down the rank on his arms and knees.
“I turned around and Derrick Bird was walking behind me about four or five paces, still with the rifle in his hand,” he said.
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“My intention was to save myself first but I thought if I could get to Darren I’d give him first aid because I knew he had been shot. When I got there I realised Darren did not have a face. There was nothing to be done.
“I did not check his pulse or anything like that. I looked back and Derrick was just walking behind me. I just stared at him. He never said anything and did not do anything.”
At this point he heard Richard Webster, another taxi driver, emerge from a shop to shout across the road: “Derrick what the f****** hell are you doing?” Bird turned around and drove off without uttering a word.
The inquest jury watched closed-circuit television footage that showed Bird driving around the town’s one-way system to arrive back in Duke Street, where he fired further shots at Mr Reid, missing him and hitting the hairdresser’s window behind him.
Mr Reid said that a girl had come out from the salon to try to stem the bleeding with towels. He told her to get back into the shop because the danger was not over.
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“Somebody said ‘there he is again — he is coming back’,” said Mr Reid. “The next thing I heard was him firing the weapon again, in my direction. But we all ran away then.”
Later, as police gave chase in marked and unmarked vehicles, Mr Reid went up to a police officer and asked for an ambulance. “He asked me why I needed an ambulance — I said ‘I have been shot in the back’.”
As he completed his evidence Mr Reid, a taxi driver for 20 years, said that he had lost “two good guys”. “It is not right,” he said.
Earlier Barbara Tingey, a sandwich shop worker who dialled the emergency services, described how Mr Rewcastle was thrown up in the air by the force of the blast. People were hysterical and the emergency handler asked several times for the hysterical chatter to stop as Mrs Tingey tried to explain that people had been shot outside the shop.
At one point during the 999 call, shots could be heard in the background followed by a short silence. Mrs Tingey tells the operator: “He is still shooting ... oh my God, oh my God”.
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The gunman had already killed his brother David, Kevin Commons, a solicitor, and was to embark on his 40-mile killing spree around the Western Fells.
The inquest continues.