27-year-old Christopher Erunse who tried to flee to Amsterdam after shooting dead a childhood friend in broad-daylight has been jailed for 18 years on Wednesday, June 15.
Christopher Erunse, 28, was last year October charged with the murder of Moses Fadairo.
Moses Fadairo, 25, had become a father to twin sons three months before he was was gunned down by Christopher Erunse on a busy market street in Clapton in suspected gangland execution in Hackney, east Londonon Saturday, September 26, 2015.
Customers at restaurants and cafes nearby ran for cover when Moses chased after and stabbed Erunse in the leg, and he retaliated by opening fire. The Old Bailey heard Moses and his older brother Emmanuel had been hunting down Erunse in a taxi on September 26 last year over a drug dispute, leaping out to confront him in Chatsworth Road just after 1pm.
Emmanuel dodged the bullets as he hid in the Mighty Meat butcher’s shop, but Moses, was struck once in the chest and died at the scene.
Erunse, of Chalcombe Road, Greenwich, was cleared of murder and attempted murder by a jury but found guilty of manslaughter and possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
His accomplice, Bradley Wynter, 28, admitted carrying the gun away from the scene of the shooting, and is due to be sentenced later.
He had been in Percy Ingle’s bakery at the time of the shooting, but had been caught on CCTV dropping the weapon while carrying it away wrapped in his jacket.
Judge Wendy Joseph QC said the shooting was part of a spiral of “tit for tat revenge”.
“The effect of it has rolled on and will roll on perhaps forever – the impact is huge and the damage irreparable”, she said. A young man of 24 has lost his life and his children left fatherless. His mother has been left inconsolable and unable to come to terms with what’s happened, and his siblings are bereft.”
She said Erunse had chosen to live in “a world of violence and drugs”, and chose to carry a loaded gun rather than go to the police for help when he got into the dispute with the Fadairo brothers.
“You armed yourself with a loaded weapon and went on to the high street at the busiest time of day on the busiest day of the week”, she said. Frankly it’s a miracle no innocent passerby was shot and badly injured in the scenes that unfolded.”
Erunse was arrested three days after the shooting as he sat on a plane that was about to take off from Birmingham Airport. As he was being led away by officers, he said into a mobile phone: “I’ve been nabbed.”
The Fadairo family told Evening Standard how his death has torn them apart. Elizabeth Fadairo, 22, his sister, today Friday, June 17, accepted that Moses had “made mistakes” in his life but that his death had “ripped her family apart”
“This violence has to stop. Think of the families it tears apart. There is so much we have lost. Think of his sons who will grow up without a father. These feuds are madness. The man who killed my brother was once his friend.
Prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC said Erunse had grown up with the Fadairo brothers in Hackney as friends, but their relationship soured over some missing drugs.
“The fatal incident took place at around lunchtime on that same Saturday in Chatsworth Road, a busy road in Hackney”, he said. “It was a sunny day. People were eating outside at cafes and restaurants, parents were out shopping with their children. What followed was, on any view, quite outrageous.”
Wynter, who has spent most of his adult life in prison, claims he threw the gun into the Thames after the shooting
