ROSS: ASSASSIN DRESSED AS LAWYER GUNNED DOWN VISITOR AFTER PRISON TIP-OFF

A gunman dressed as a lawyer shot dead a visitor in broad daylight outside the UK’s largest prison, the Old Bailey heard today (Weds).

Darcy Austin-Bruce, 20, was gunned down as he walked in to HMP Wandsworth after a tip-off from a prisoner on the same wing as the man he was due to see.

He was being escorted from the visitor centre with two friends when a man dressed smartly in a suit approached and pulled out a handgun.

Mr Austin-Bruce was blasted five times before being left for dead on the pavement.

The gunman, who was still wearing a crash helmet, then ran to a waiting moped where the getaway rider was also wearing a smart suit.

The men sped away as Mr Austin-Bruce bled to death, shortly after 2pm on May 1 2009.

Prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC told jurors it was ‘a murder of quite breathtaking audacity’.

Four men Rupert Ross and Casper Smith, both 30, and Khori Hines and Leon De St Aubin (CORR), both 34, are now on trial for Mr Austin-Bruce’s killing.

The court heard Ross and De St Aubin had been friends with the victim, but had fallen out with him shortly before the murder.

They took revenge days after Mr Austin-Bruce and another man had reportedly fired a gun at a car which De St Aubin had been driving and in which Ross was a passenger.

Mr Aylett said the shooting was ‘in the most literal sense an inside job’ as it had been planned from within the walls of the prison.

It is alleged Smith used a mobile phone, which had been smuggled in to him while he was on remand at the jail, to contact his cousin Hines and informed him of the exact time and place that Mr Austin-Bruce would be visiting a fellow prisoner.

Hines is accused of passing on the information to Ross and De St Aubin who launched the ‘audacious’ attack outside the jail in southwest London.

The prosecutor said: ‘Darcy Austin-Bruce and two friends had come to the prison in order to visit another friend who was a serving prisoner.

‘Just as Mr Austin-Bruce and his two friends were being escorted from the visitor centre to the entrance to the main prison a man in a suit appeared and to anyone who noticed him the smartly dressed man might have looked like a lawyer making a legal visit to a client inside the prison.

‘There was something, however, slightly unusual about the man in the suit, he was wearing a crash helmet which he had not removed from his head.

‘As Darcy Austin-Bruce and his two friends were walking from the visitor centre to the entrance to the prison the man in the suit suddenly produced a handgun.

‘He shot Darcy Austin-Bruce in the back and then either as Mr Austin-Bruce span round or else as he collapsed the gunman shot him in the throat.

‘In all Darcy Austin-Bruce was shot five times at close range. As Mr Austin-Bruce fell to the ground the gunman ran off towards a nearby moped where a getaway driver dressed in a similar fashion to the gunman was waiting with the engine revving and ready to go.’

Jurors were told little could be done to save the victim and he was pronounced dead at the scene a short while later.

‘This was a murder of quite breathtaking audacity,’ said Mr Aylett.

‘It had been committed in broad daylight in the presence of a number of women and children who had gone to the prison to see their loved ones.

‘This audacious murder was also carefully planned.’

Smith, he said, had provided the inside information and tipped-off Hines that Mr Austin-Bruce was due to visit a fellow prisoner on the same wing.

‘The killers knew precisely when their prey would be at the prison,’ said Mr Aylett.

Hines, Ross and De St Aubin had all left their mobile phones at home in an attempt to disguise their movements from investigators, it was said.

The scooter, which had been stolen the night before the shooting, has never been found, along with the murder weapon or the clothing the men had been wearing.

Only one witness, who had been sitting in a nearby car listening to some music, spotted the gunman’s face was white through his open visa.

Mr Aylett said: ‘That would suggest it must be Rupert Ross who fired the gun.’

The court heard there was evidence Ross and Austin-Bruce had been involved in the supply of drugs together, but their relationship had soured and had led to the initial shooting incident.

‘The prosecution suggest that Ross and De St Aubin, tipped off by Casper Smith inside the prison via Khori Hines – Casper Smith’s cousin – murdered Darcy Austin-Bruce in order to get even,’ said Mr Aylett.

Jurors were told the police investigation had been long and painstaking and three of the men were not charged until November last year. De St Aubin was subsequently charged in March this year.

Mr Aylett said there had also been a ‘hideous postscript’ to Mr Austin-Bruce’s killing on the evening of his funeral and wake, on June 4 2009.

While mourners paid their respects at a golf club in Wandsworth, a friend of Ross and De St Aubin, Anthony Otton, 28, was shot dead on the Fulham Court Estate in west London.

More than two years on no one has been charged with the murder, the court was told.

De Saint Aubin, of (26) De Palma Court, Racton Road, Fulham, west London; Hines, of (29b) Rosebury Road, Fulham; Ross, of [11] Salisbury Pavement, Dawes Road, Fulham; and Smith, of no fixed address; deny murder.

The trial continues.