A judge has commended two Metropolitan Police detectives for their ‘painstaking and thorough’ investigation that led to the conviction of a 28-year-old Southall man for attempted murder.
Firad Muhammed of Ellison Gardens, travelled on 20 October 2020 to an address in Chingley Close, Bromley where he knocked on the door and when the victim, a 32-year-old man, answered he then fired two shots from a handgun, which hit his legs. Muhammed then fled the scene.
With no obvious motive for the shooting, detectives Ben Briselden and Imran Hansraj carried out extensive phone analysis which identified Facebook messages between Muhammed and the victim’s wife.
The messages, many of which were flirty in nature, included some that revealed Muhammed expressing regret that he had come to the victim’s home address to shoot him and stating he should have done it in a different location in Bromley.
Muhammed was arrested and charged with attempted murder and possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and was sentenced to 28 years’ imprisonment at Inner London Crown Court on 18 November 2022 after he was found guilty of both offences after a trial in July.
He must serve at least two thirds of his sentence in jail.
Detective Constable Ben Briselden, the officer in the case, said: “Muhammed travelled to the victim’s home address with the intention to kill him. When we started the investigation, there were no leads and we had to build the case through detailed mobile phone analysis.”
He added: “This could easily have been a murder investigation and I hope the sentence allows the victim, who has now made a full recovery, to move on with his life in the knowledge Muhammed is not going to be out of prison for a very long time.
DC Briselden and his colleague DC Imran Hansraj received commendations from the judge in the case
Judge Ian Darling said during sentencing: “In this investigation there is no doubt they (the police) started from scratch and built a case painstakingly and thoroughly. The investigation into the shooting was fraught with difficulty, it seems no one was keen to tell the police anything of the truth. “The Met Police had no active leads on which to investigate the shooting and were completely in the dark.”
Judge Darling added: “The police set about a particularly onerous and impressive trawl through phone contacts to try and identify potential suspects. It was by its nature a slow and thankless task which thankfully and to the credit of the investigate officers finally bore fruit”
