Teenage Killer Jailed for Stretford Shooting

21 December 2011, 16:22 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

A killer who went on the run at the age of 15 after the fatal shooting of a schoolboy in a pub car park in Stretford has been jailed for a minimum of 18 years.

In August 2009, Greater Manchester Police took the unusual step of naming the then youth Moses Mathias as a suspect for the murder of 16-year-old Giuseppe Gregory.

Huge photographs of Mathias were beamed on to a big screen in Piccadilly Gardens in central Manchester as police also offered a £15,000 reward for information to track him down.

Mathias, now 18, remained at large until he was arrested in Amsterdam earlier this year on a European Arrest Warrant after a joint investigation by the Serious Organised Crime Agency and GMP.

He was flown back to the UK in June and four months later admitted the murder of the youngster who was gunned down in the early hours of May 11 2009 in a car outside the Robin Hood pub in Stretford.

 Sentencing him to a life term and rejecting the defendant's claim he had only gone to the pub to commit a robbery, Mr Justice Holroyde said: ``This was a planned shooting motivated by inter-gang rivalry and a desire for vengeance.''