Cumbria: Carnage sparked by petty taxi rank argument

Cumbria killings: Full coverage

Whatever passed between Derrick Bird and two other drivers was enough to upset him so much he stormed off and drove home, calling at a Tesco store on the way to buy food, and doing no more work that evening.

His return to the rank in Duke Street at 10.35am yesterday was to mark the start of a murderous rampage that left a dozen innocent people dead and 25 more injured, three of them critically.

Bird had two firearms, one of them believed to be shotgun. He drove up to the rank and began shooting at three cabbies, killing two of them, one of whom was shot through the head at close quarters, before getting back into his car and screeching away.

At some point, the windscreen of his Citroen Picasso was shattered, and as he careered through the streets, eyewitnesses spoke of a gun being pointed through it, and indiscriminate firing.

Terrified pedestrians fled for cover, holing up in shops, pubs and offices as police scrambled to respond. As Bird raced through the streets, he left devastation in his wake, bodies lying in the street, their faces covered by blankets by the emergency services as they struggled to cope, among them a cyclist left propped against a wall.

Alan Hannah, 68, said: "I saw a man with a large shotgun and his windscreen was smashed. I drove through the red light to get into Lowther Street and get out of the way. I got home safely but was very shaken."

Bird headed out of Whitehaven towards Egremont, where a woman in her 60s was murdered on the doorstep of shocked resident Billy Boakes.

"He stopped his car, got out of the car, got his gun out, went up to her and just shot her in the stomach," the 23-year-old said. "There were two more people just further down the road and nothing happened to them. It was obviously the case of him just shooting random people."

Seascale was to suffer next, where Bird left more dead and seriously injured in his wake. GPs from the local surgery rushed to help, and what they found was shocking, said Dr Barrie Walker. "We are talking about people with serious shotgun injuries lying on the pavement in the village, which was horrific."

Cringlethwaite was also targeted. Gary Toomey, 38, found one of the victims bleeding outside his home."I saw a car screeching off and a man saying 'help me'. He was bleeding heavily from the side of his face. He said he dived out of the way of the shot and the man in the car pointed the gun down and shot him again in the back from about six feet away as he lay on the floor."

The last killing appeared to be near Gosforth, where Bird shot a young farmer, named locally as Garry Purdham, in a field where he was working with his uncle.

Bird made his way to Boot, a dead-end surrounded by woodland, where terrified locals had barricaded themselves into two pubs on police instructions.

The killer abandoned his car and made his way into the woods at about 1.40pm as the massive police manhunt closed in. There, he turned a gun on himself.