StoryCast ’21: EP18/21 The Shooting

On 22 July 2005, when Patricia da Silva learned that police marksman had killed a man at Stockwell Underground Station in London, she had no reason to second-guess news reports describing the deceased as a terrorist. The capital then was on high alert. Just two weeks earlier, a series of bomb attacks killed 52 people, injured hundreds and London was left reeling.<br />Then, on 21 July 2005, four men targeted the capital’s transport network in a carbon-copy style attack.<br />This time, the terrorists' bombs failed to explode and they fled.<br />So less than 24-hours after that failed attack, when Patricia left for work, she knew from news reports that police were in a race against time to catch the bombers.<br />She’d absolutely no idea that the block of flats where she lived on Scotia Road in Tulse Hill was already under intense surveillance; that it had been linked by police to one of the terrorists — Hussein Osman, the target of the police shooting in Stockwell.<br />Or was he?<br />Critically, Scotia Rd, Tulse Hill was much more than a location of police interest, it was home to Patricia, and her cousin — Jean Charles de Menezes, an electrician also from Brazil.<br />On the morning of 22 July, when Patricia learned of the shooting, she couldn’t have imagined that a catastrophic chain of events had already cost Jean Charles de Menezes his life.<br /><br />CREDITS -<br /><br />The Shooting was produced by Rob Mulhern and Tom Gillespie.<br />Story originator, Tom Gillespie.<br />Special thanks to our contributors, Patricia da Silva and Mark White<br />Archive, Robert Fellowes<br />TV treatment, Victoria Hudson-Grant<br />Digital, Tom Gillespie<br />Head of Radio, Sky News, Dave Terris<br />Design and graphics, Brian Gillingham<br />Social media, Samuel Gould<br />Email: <a href="mailto:storycast@sky.uk">storycast@sky.uk</a><br />For more on this story, go to <a href="http://www.skynews/storycast21" rel="noopener">www.skynews/storycast21</a><br />#StoryCast21