Jail for hitman who gunned down two

Hitman John McSally, 50, of Plaza Gardens, Basford, Nottingham, was convicted of murder and attempted murder following a trial at Leicester Crown Court.

He was ordered to serve a minimum of 35 years in jail by trial judge Mr Justice Pitchers.

The court heard during the course of the month-long trial that Rastafarian youth worker Derrick Senior was shot just days after he helped jail four men who unleashed a vicious racist assault on him in a pub.

The convicted men were part of a gang who were unhappy the case had gone to court and wanted revenge.

After Mr Senior snubbed an offer of money not to testify against the thugs who put him in hospital, McSally was ordered to "send out a message" by exacting revenge on the innocent man.

On May 17, 2004, three days after he was in court to see his attackers sentenced, Mr Senior was shot five times through the window of his car as he reversed down the driveway of his home in Harmston Rise, Basford.

Mr Senior, who had only left his home to buy a packet of cigarettes, survived by "playing dead" and slumping forward on to the wheel of his car, prosecutor Timothy Spencer QC told the court.

McSally was also convicted of the gangland murder of Patrick Marshall, and possessing a prohibited weapon.

Mr Marshall, 46, was gunned down in the car park of the Park Tavern pub in Basford, on February 8 2004, three months before Mr Senior was shot. The father-of-one, described in court as an unofficial debt collector, was shot in a gangland feud.