Keyham Shootings

Sheryll Murray Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

On Thursday 12 August at about 6.10 pm, the first shots were fired in Keyham. In the space of the short amount of time that followed, our city was forever changed. That day, we tragically lost five members of our community. We remember Maxine Davison, Stephen Washington, Kate Shepherd, Lee Martyn and his three-year-old daughter Sophie Martyn—five people: mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, friends, neighbours and colleagues, members of the community whose lives were taken from us too soon. We also remember two others who were injured and taken to hospital that day, whose recovery we continue to hope is as full and fast as possible.

This incident has devastated the proud and tight-knit communities of Keyham and Ford in Plymouth. Tonight I will not be speaking about the causes of the shooting. The inquest and the ongoing investigations will set out the answers to those in due course. I want to focus on how our community will get the support it needs not just today, tomorrow, next week or next month but for the coming years—support to come to terms with what has happened, and hopefully support to heal. We know the earlier the help arrives, the greater the effect it will have.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate. As he knows, one of the victims of this atrocious act of violence lived in my neighbouring village of Kingsand for a time. I met her on a number of occasions as our children both went to the same school. She did nothing to deserve this callous and cowardly act. The hon. Gentleman is right to ask for support for this neighbourhood and I support him. We need to heal the people and try to help them to cope with this barbaric act. I thank him for bringing this matter to the attention of the House.

[Luke Pollard]

I thank the hon. Lady, my colleague from just across the Tamar. This tragedy has affected not just our entire city of Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall and the wider peninsula, but the country as well, and it is something that we face together. I thank her for her remarks.

Our community in Plymouth is facing a collective trauma. We know that there are over 300 eyewitnesses to the shooting—people who have seen a body or blood on their street—and many of those are children, who should never have witnessed anything like this in their young lives. There is nothing that prepares you as an MP for the conversation with a parent about how their child saw someone get shot in front of them—what they should say, what they should do, who they should turn to—and not always having the answers to give them. Like many of the community responders, I had conversations like this not just once or twice but many times every day in the aftermath of the shooting.

My experience, though, has been no different from the school staff at Ford Primary School who opened their doors to the community just hours after the shooting, the street pastors, the police officers and the PCSOs, the local vicars, the staff at our local Co-op, or the residents told to stay in their homes for days after the shooting with the bodies of their neighbours on the streets outside. I say these things not just to seek and elicit sympathy but to illustrate what collective trauma means in a very real human sense. Biddick Drive in Keyham could be any street in any of our communities, and that is what makes this tragedy so scary for all of us.

Plymouth is a trauma-informed city, and the experience of communities in similar circumstances in the past has shown us that after an event like this there are consequences that can be predicted. More children will struggle at school, get lower grades and drop out of school earlier. More people will face unemployment and insecure work. More people will be a victim of crime and more people will themselves commit more crime. More people will experience and suffer from domestic and sexual abuse. More people will suffer from severe mental health problems, anxiety and depression. I see it as my job as Keyham’s MP to do everything I can to stop that from happening.

As a city-wide response, local councillors from all parties, community leaders and the police and crime commissioner all shared in this effort. This really has been a Team Plymouth response. I have never been so proud of my city as I was in the days after the shooting. There was an incredible response on the day from the paramedics and the police who rushed to the scene, the four air ambulances that attended, the doctors and the nurses, the city council and its staff, the local schools and many more. Our whole community stepped up. The teams at Ford Primary School and Keyham Barton, as well as Stuart Road and other schools, have been superb, as have the churches that opened their doors immediately—St Mark’s and St Thomas’s in particular. I want to thank the local councillors—Sally Cresswell, Jemima Laing, Bill Stevens, Mark Coker, Charlotte Cree, Tudor Evans, Gareth Derrick and Stephen Hulme—and the police and crime commissioner, Alison Hernandez, and her team for the work they have done. This was a Team Plymouth response. I also thank the Wolseley Trust for its co-ordinating and fundraising for the Plymouth together fund, which has already raised thousands for the funerals, the victims and the community, but more is needed. Donations are still being made online.

Local businesses large and small have also stepped up, including Zoe Stephens from the Co-op, who provided candles for the vigils and cups of tea at the events, and Richard Baron, who dropped everything to install more home security for residents. When your child cannot sleep because of what has happened and they are scared that a bad man will come through the window, a simple window restrictor is worth more than its weight in gold. I want to thank in particular Keyham neighbourhood watch—Sarah, John, Simon, Lena, Laura, Kicki and Hazel—and its relentless and positive chair, Kevin Sproston. I thank everyone for the outpouring of support from across the country. The support that we saw in Plymouth was cross-party.