Plymouth shooting inquest: Officer apologises to families of shooting victims

Maxine Davison was Jake Davison's first victim and was killed at her property on Biddick Drive

A senior police officer has publicly apologised to families of the victims of a mass shooting for the first time.

Ch Supt Roy Linden of Devon and Cornwall Police admitted a series of failings led to killer Jake Davison being given a shotgun licence.

Davison killed five people with a pump-action shotgun in Plymouth in August 2021.

Ch Supt Linden told an inquest Davison should not have been given a licence or had the weapon returned to him.

Davison, 22, killed his mother Maxine, 51; three-year-old Sophie Martyn; her father, Lee, 43; Stephen Washington, 59; and Kate Shepherd, 66, in the Keyham area, before turning the gun on himself.

An inquest into the deaths of the shooting victims continues

Ch Supt Linden is the Devon and Cornwall Police officer in charge of changes within the force in the wake of the killings.

At the inquest into the deaths, Nick Stanage, the barrister representing the Davison family, asked him: "Do you accept that management and decision-making staff in the licensing unit failed all of the families in this inquest but make no apology for it?"

The officer replied: "Jake Davison should not have had a licence and in 2020 it should not have been given back to him. For that we very much apologise - it should not have happened."

Davison first successfully applied for a shotgun licence in 2017, the inquest at Exeter Racecourse heard.

His gun was seized after he attacked two teenagers in a skatepark in 2020 but was returned to him in July 2021 - a month before the fatal attack.

Bridget Dolan KC, the barrister asking questions on behalf of the coroner, asked what had allowed that situation to happen.

Ch Supt Linden said there were "budgetary pressures across all forces".

He added the "quality" of leadership and management was "a significant contributory factor".

Ch Supt Linden also criticised the "executive scrutiny" of firearms licensing and the IT systems in place.

He said: "The scrutiny and the quality of the decision making made by enquiry officers throughout and the interpretation of national guidance was not as it should have been."

Police returned a pump-action shotgun to Jake Davison before he shot five people in August 2021

Asked if training of firearms officers had also been a factor, Ch Supt Linden said: "It's quite clear in this case there was an overly optimistic tolerance of risk."

He said decisions were made by firearms enquiry officers that "clearly should have been referred to a senior manager".

Ms Dolan asked Ch Supt Linden how the same situation would not happen again.

He said: "There is a tendency to say it will never happen again. I could not sit here and give true evidence to say that and that's a sad and sobering thing to say."

Ch Supt Linden said the number of staff in firearms licensing at the force had more than doubled from 45 at the time of the shooting to 99 currently.

He added that the increased number of staff was in part to deal with a backlog in licence applications and that the increased number of staff was not guaranteed to continue in the future.

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