page_title: Barry Williams (spree killer)
section_title: 1978 incident
hierarchical_section_title: Barry Williams (spree killer) / 1978 incident
caption_attribution_description: English: Staffordshire Shire Hall, Stafford, England
context_page_description: Barry Kenneth Williams, known since 1994 as Harry Street, was a British spree killer. A foundry worker who lived with his parents, he shot eight people in the English Midlands towns of West Bromwich and Nuneaton in little over an hour on 26 October 1978, killing five. Following a high-speed car chase, he was arrested and in 1979 was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He was detained in high-security hospitals under mental health legislation.
  After being given a conditional release in 1994, he changed his name, moved to Wales, and married. In 2014, following allegations of harassment against his neighbours, he was convicted of further firearms offences. He was again ordered to be detained in a secure hospital, with little likelihood of release, and died in December 2014.
context_section_description: On the evening of 26 October 1978, about a week after the extermination threat, George Burkitt and his 20-year-old son Philip were working on Philip's Triumph Spitfire car (bearing registration number WHA 370H) in front of their house. At around 7pm, annoyed by the noise they were making, Williams shot them both with a 9mm Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol. George died where he fell and Philip, wounded, ran into the house. Williams followed him, shooting him again and killing him. He then shot and killed George's wife, Iris. The Burkitts' 17-year-old daughter was hit four times in the back and once in the thigh, but survived. Two other neighbours, a married couple who had witnessed the attack on the Burkitts, also survived being shot. The injured were treated at Birmingham General Hospital.
  After discharging a total of 23 rounds, Williams fled the scene by car, firing a further six shots from a second, .22-calibre pistol as he did so. In Stanhurst Way he shot at two boys, aged 10 and 11, who were playing football, and at a woman, but missed them all. Passing through Wednesbury, he shot through the windows of a barber's shop and two houses. In one of these, a nine-year-old girl was hurt by flying glass. He stopped for petrol in Walsall and drove off without paying.
  At around 8:10pm, Williams shot and killed another married couple, Michel and Lisa Di Maria, after stopping to use the petrol filling station which they ran, Arbury Road Service Station, at Stockingford, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, some 20 miles (32 km) from his home. Lisa was killed immediately, and Michel died later in hospital.
  Williams slept rough in some woodland, and was arrested the next morning, in Spring Gardens, Buxton, after a 30 miles (48 km) car chase at high speed, starting on the Derbyshire moors. After his car was involved in a collision, he pulled a gun and attempted to hijack one of the police cars which had been following him. He was overpowered without firing his gun by the unarmed officers who had been pursuing him. He later said he had wanted the police to shoot him. Police found 147 9mm and 770 .22 rounds in his car, along with the .22 calibre pistol which had a full magazine, and several home-made bombs.
  He was subsequently charged with five counts of murder. Two counts of attempted murder were ordered to lie on file.
  In March 1979 at Stafford Crown Court he pleaded not guilty to murder but instead pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The plea was accepted by the prosecution, after psychiatrists gave evidence that he had an active paranoid psychosis. His indefinite detention was ordered by the trial judge, Mr Justice Stephen Brown, and he was held in Broadmoor Hospital and at Ashworth Hospital, both high security units.
  His parents described him as "a quiet boy" and said they had "no idea" of what he had been preparing to do.
caption: The former Stafford Crown Court building
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