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The criminals who helped organize the murders of John Kinsella and Paul Massey continue to sponsor violent crimes, ECHO may reveal.
Kinsella and Massey were killed as part of a bloody feud within a Salford-based gang known as Team A. The two men were close friends and were killed by the same gunman in targeted shootouts, known as gang “hitting.”
Mark Fellows was a loyal “soldier” within the ranks of a rival faction targeting the leadership of the A-Team gang. The Fellows picked up Massey one Sunday night when Salford’s man came home.
Three years later, he shot and killed Kinsella, a known criminal, in front of his partner on a Saturday morning.
On Thursday, a major trial concluded at Manchester Crown Court when the 40-year-old Fellows and four other men were charged with being the protagonists of a violent gang war that swept through Salford.
Prosecutors claimed that Fellows, Jamie Rothwell, 33, Liam Gee, 31, Aaron Parkin, 32, and Warren Barnes, 32, were members of the rival faction that attacked the A-Team leadership during a campaign that brought terror to the streets.
Rothwell, Gee and Barnes were cleared of all charges. Fellows, who is already serving a life sentence for two murders, received another life sentence today after being found guilty in connection with the brutal attack on Aaron Williams, an associate of Salford’s A Team gang.
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Fellows was acquitted of conspiracy to murder charges but convicted of one count of conspiracy to intentionally cause serious bodily injury in connection with the attack on Williams.
Aaron Parkin, whom the judge said played a “critical” role in the plots to attack Williams and another A-team member, Abdul Rahman Khan, was jailed for 14 years.
Parkin had previously admitted two counts of conspiracy to intentionally cause serious bodily harm in connection with both attacks.
The trial heard from the well-known Salford man, Michael Carroll, who led the faction of the anti-A team. Carroll, who was named in the indictment, was not in court.
Last April, eight members of the rival faction of Team A were jailed for their involvement in the violence, including the attack on the Hickey family.
The ECHO can now reveal that there has been a new dispute between the main members of the anti-Team A gang. This dispute, it has been claimed, formed the background for the death of 39-year-old Peter Andrew Williamson.
(Image: Liverpool Echo)
Williamson, known as Snaggle, was killed when he was shot five times while parking his Audi outside his villa in Fuengirola on Spain’s Costa del Sol on November 21 of last year.
ECHO also understands that high-ranking members of the anti-A-Team gang have sponsored a wave of violence in the Warrington area after a fight with a city drug dealer.
The Warrington man, linked by the police to pistols and firearms, is said to have been slow to pay off a large debt to a boss of the dreaded Salford gang.
This dispute has led to two shootings in the town and an explosives incident.
On January 11, a former boxer was shot on a residential street. The convicted drug dealer was attacked while on his way to a house in Monks Place. On February 25, a car caught fire twice in a single night near a pub on Bewsey Road.
Then, on April 15, an improvised explosive device was left in a front lawn on Birtles Road in the Orford area. The bomb squad was called in and a controlled explosion was carried out on the device.
Police said the targeted incident was related to serious organized crime.
In April, a man in his 50s was shot and seriously injured on a street in Warrington. Since then, two men have been charged with attempted murder.
Earlier this year, a woman who claimed to be related to the Warrington drug dealer told ECHO that her family was living in fear due to the violence. He said the Salford gangsters wanted “blood, not money.”
The woman also said that Salford’s gang was targeting the Warrington trafficker’s associates in the prison system. He said that a prisoner had boiling water thrown in his face at Altcourse Prison.
The A Team gang is said to have formed in 2012 when a group of 50 criminals from Salford decided to join forces.
The gang, which is said to have been led by Stephen Britton, appeared to attempt to emulate Salford’s original signature from the 1980s and 1990s, which was related to armed robbery, nightclub security, and protection scams.
Although Britton has been named the leader of the A-Team gang in three trials, he has not been charged with any of the crimes considered by any of the jurors.
The new generation of criminals became known for partying in Manchester’s nightclubs and mingling with rich and famous faces from all over the city.
Paul Massey, who was a prominent member of the original Salford firm, had developed a relationship with the team. A. Massey was particularly close to Stephen Britton, and the young man was said to be learning from the more experienced criminal.
Before long, Massey introduced his good friend John Kinsella to Team A, and the two reached out to the next generation of criminals. Sources have told ECHO that Kinsella’s association with the Manchester criminals was seen as unusual and frowned upon by Liverpool’s more established organized crime groups.
Team A loved to party, but when a drink was thrown on a gang member in a Manchester nightclub, the flaws within the gang were exposed.
The nightclub fight was followed by a fight at a Salford cafe. After this, the battle lines were drawn between two rival groups. The original A-team stood behind Britton, while the breakaway faction was controlled by Carroll.
In January 2015, criminals from A Team vandalized a car that belonged to Carroll’s former partner. When the young woman yelled at the men, they threatened to cut her head off with an industrial saw.
This was followed by a wave of violence in Salford when the rival faction attacked Team A.
Abdul Rahman Khan was attacked with a shotgun and Arron Williams was stabbed with a machete in the street.
A grenade was thrown at Ryan and James Coward’s home, and then Jamie Rothwell was shot and injured at a Manchester car wash.
Weeks later, Paul Massey was killed in a machine gun attack on his own doorstep. Fellows was shot and seriously injured weeks later.
In October 2015, violence reached a terrifying peak when a mother and son were shot and injured in their own home. Jayne Hickey and her seven-year-old son Christian were said to be the wife and son of one of Carroll’s associates.
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The shooting at the gate sparked a wave of revulsion across the country and Greater Manchester police flooded the streets of Salford with resources.
A GMP intelligence document leaked to ECHO revealed that a weapon used by Team A in gang warfare had been linked to a wave of shootings in Merseyside. Sources told ECHO that a Liverpool gang had contracted the Heckler and Koch P7 self-loading pistol.
The recent Manchester Crown Court trial focused in particular on the Khan shooting and the machete attack on Williams.
Tracking devices had been fitted to the cars Khan and Williams were driving. The password to access the devices was ‘gayteam’, which prosecutors believe was an insult directed at the leaders of Team A.
The murder of John Kinsella, which occurred three years after Massey was shot and killed, appears to belong to a macabre subplot.
In a letter from a prison to a national newspaper, Fellows said he targeted Kinsella because the Liverpool man rightly blamed him for Massey’s murder.
Fellows reasoned that he had to get to Kinsella before the man from North Liverpool got to him. He recruited his friend Steven Boyle to act as an observer on the day of the shooting.
In June of this year, ECHO reached out to Cheshire Police with allegations of violent Salford gangs sponsoring the violence in Warrington.
Superintendent Martin Cleworth said: “For the past two years we have been relentless in disrupting serious and organized crime in Warrington.
“This is evident in the significant number of people who have been convicted. At least four organized crime gangs involving up to 50 people have been sentenced to a total of 540 years.
“Our hard work to go after those involved in organized crime and protect the community continues as we execute warrants, make arrests and seize drugs.
“We work together with our partners in the community and remain committed to making the city a safer place.
“Information from the public is vital and we will act on the information provided to us and will encourage you to report it on 101 or via our website https://www.cheshire.police.uk/. If you do not wish to speak directly to an officer, you can contact Crimestoppers, anonymously, at 0800 555 111 ”.
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