DE ST AUBIN: LONDON FIREFIGHTER FACING LIFE TERM FOR PRISON EXECUTION
A serving firefighter who teamed up with a former public schoolboy turned gangster to shoot dead a visitor outside the UK’s largest prison is facing a life sentence today (Tues).
Leon De St Aubin (CORR), 34, and Rupert Ross, 30, dressed as lawyers to gun down former friend Darcy Austin-Bruce as he walked in to HMP Wandsworth.
Mr Austin-Bruce, 20, a former Fulham FC academy player, was blasted five times at close range in broad daylight outside the main gates.
Gunman Ross, who was wearing a smart suit and crash helmet to disguise his face, then fled to a waiting moped ridden by De St Aubin who sped away shortly after 2pm on May 1 2009.
Prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC said it was ‘a murder of quite breathtaking audacity’.
De St Aubin, who was working out of Kentish Town fire station in north London, was convicted of murder after a 10-week trial at the Old Bailey.
It has since emerged that De St Aubin has two convictions for supplying class A drugs.
In 1998 he was jailed for four years for dealing cocaine, but he failed to disclose his convictions when he took the job at Kentish Town.
Ross, a one time pupil at the prestigious Dulwich College in south east London, was also found guilty.
Both men shook their heads as they were convicted.
The pair will be sentenced on Thursday morning by Judge Martin Stephens QC.
As Ross was led to the cells he looked to the public gallery and shouted: ‘I love you mum. Be strong.’
The killers had allegedly been tipped-off by Wandsworth prisoner Casper Smith, 30, who was on the same wing as the man Mr Austin-Bruce was due to visit.
It was claimed he used a smuggled mobile phone to communicate with his cousin Khori Hines, 34, who is accused of passing on the information to Ross and St Aubin, also known as Majors.
Both men may now face a retrial after the jury failed to reach verdicts in their cases after more than 50 hours of deliberations.
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: ‘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.’
A post mortem found he had been shot three times in the back, once in the abdomen and once in the neck.
Karen Austin, the victim’s mother, said: ‘He had so much he wanted and could have achieved in life.
‘Down to a senseless, cowardly, evil decision by some Darcy’s dreams were ripped away and he never got an opportunity to mature in to the man he would have become.’
She added: ‘I couldn’t prevent this terrible, horrific crime, I couldn’t hold him as he lay dying, I couldn’t even take the bullets as dear God I wish I had.
‘I died inside on that horrific day. I will never be the person I once was.’
Ross and De St Aubin had left their mobile phones at home in an attempt to disguise their movements from investigators.
The scooter, which had been stolen the night before the shooting, has never been found, along with the murder weapon, likely to have been a revolver made by either Smith and Wesson, Taurus or Ruger, or the clothing the men had been wearing.
There was evidence Ross and Austin-Bruce had been involved in supplying drugs together, but their relationship had soured.
Ross was arrested within days and detectives found two pieces of body armour at his mother’s address in Vera Road, Fulham, west London.
A bulky green bullet-proof vest was covered in firearms discharge residue, which matched the chemical composition of the bullets used to kill Mr Austin-Bruce.
The former public schoolboy had been involved in supplying or taking drugs for years.
During a drug rehabilitation programme at a clinic in Boscombe, Dorset, Ross wrote a ‘life story’ document in which he said: ‘I wanted the gangsta lifestyle and ended up dealing again.
‘I was making good money and living a fast life….life was very hectic, lots of wars over drugs and money and one or two shoot outs.’
Ross was charged in November last year and De St Aubin was subsequently charged in March this year.
He became an uncle on the day Austin-Bruce was gunned down. He subsequently made an appointment to meet with detectives on May 5, after officers had visited Kentish Town fire station with a search warrant and emptied his locker.
‘Nothing of consequence’ was found at the fire station in Highgate Road, Camden.
In a series of interviews De St Aubin, who has a baby girl, had spent much of the day ‘chilling’ at his family home in Fulham, west London.
When asked if he knew anything about Mr Austin-Bruce’s murder, he said: ‘There’s nothing I know about that.’
De St Aubin’s brother’s partner had been rushed to Hammersmith hospital on May after suffering complications with her pregnancy.
She later gave birth to a baby girl and he went to visit them in the afternoon.
He claimed he had been up early to take his girlfriend to work at a nearby special school.
He later watched the Jeremy Kyle Show and went to his aunt’s house where played computer games with his two cousins, before going out with Ross.
None of the men gave evidence at their trial.
The court heard 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,
De Saint Aubin, of (26) De Palma Court, Racton Road, Fulham, and Ross, of [11] Salisbury Pavement, Dawes Road, Fulham, west London denied murder but were convicted.
Smith, of no fixed address, and Hines, of (29b) Rosebury Road, Fulham, will find out on Thursday if they are to face a retrial.
They were released on bail.
ENDS
