Killer Admits Shooting Manchester Schoolboy

5 October 2011, 17:34 | 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 Manchester has pleaded guilty to his murder.

In August 2009, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) took the unusual step of naming the then youth Moses Mathias as a wanted suspect for the killing 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 though 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 has appeared at Manchester Crown Court where he 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.

In March 2010, Mathias's associates Njabulo Ndlovu and Hiruy Zerihun, then aged 19 and 18, were jailed for life and ordered to serve minimum terms of 21 years and 23 years respectively after they were convicted of Giuseppe's murder.

Their trial heard the pair carried out the attack in revenge for the murder of Zerihun's boyhood friend Louis Brathwaite, also 16, who was gunned down in a betting shop in Withington, south Manchester, in January 2008.

They were were affiliated to Fallowfield Man Dem, a splinter group of the notorious Gooch Gang, who targeted Giuseppe and his friends because of their association to the rival gang the Longsight Crew.

Mathias, of no fixed abode, also pleaded guilty to possessing - together with Zerihun and Ndlovu - an imitation firearm, a self-loading pistol, a .32 pistol and six .32 bullet cartridges.

The case was adjourned for pre-sentence and psychological reports. Mathias was remanded in custody until December 21 when he will be sentenced.