Apodge production.
I shouldn't have been working that Friday. It was Friday the nineteenth. Yeah, it was Friday, the nineteenth of August twenty length. But I'm glad I was working that day because had I been home, it could have been a different kettlefish.
Yeah.
Yeah, because we were in a public place.
Now.
So after I go to work in the salon, which is literally a drive down the hill from where the metal home was. Me I moved in the day before, so I had been so for surfing at my mems because my mother was saying, don't go back, you know, to the house, it's not safe. But police then on the eighteenth of August coming installed a panic room in my house.
So basically they double skinned the bedroom door.
I had two huge metal brackets put on the door frame, and I had a piece of metal to go across this store that was in case he came to the home while they tried to sort of like get him sort of locked up because he was on bail and he was due back in court on the fourteenth of October of that year. So I'm thinking, shit, you know, I got you know, I feel like a prisoner now because I've got this panic room installed in my house, feeling like the police you know, shit now you know
they knew exactly what they were dealing with. You know, he was very anti police. You know, he had a name for himself. And I'm thinking, wow, you know, how long is this going to go on for? So anyway, I go to work on the Friday and my boss says to me, you know how you feeling. I still I'm just trying to get rid of psychle Bill, I said. You know, I don't know what I'm going to do. I said, but I sort of like feel as if my life and getting my life back. So I was
back in the home the night before. You know, all right, got this bloody panic room. But somebody something's going to happen where they're going to protect me. You know, he's going to or piss off and leave me alone. And I had it in my head for some reason. Then he was going to go to his a psychiatrist's appointment on that day. So I piled my sister. I said, do me a favor. I have a driver where I knew that the appointment might be and see if his
land drover was there. Because he had a very distinctive land drover. So anyway, off she goes, and she text me back, no, there's no sign of it, and I thinking shit, And I'd had this not in my stomach all sort of morning and even to the point, and I've never experienced it before when I was trying to eat something and it just wouldn't go down. It was
almost like there was a huge lump in my throat. Anyway, I was doing this lady's here, and I remember Josh, my oldest boy, one of his friends Nana, coming in and said, oh, how are you, Rachel, And I said My words to her was I'm trying to get rid of Real Molt and you know, you might remember the Real Moat story in the UK. And with that then I was giving this lady a change. And all of a sudden, the shop sort of went quite dark, as if there was some sort of lorry or something block
in the sunlight. And as I looked at the door, which was on like a corner, I could see Darren behind this door now, And as I'm looking at him, he's pushing the door open and I can see his hand reaching into this bagg he ad in front of him. And as I as he's doing this, I can see it's a gun, and he's pulling out a sawn off shotgun. Don't ask me why, I really don't know. I ran towards him and I started trying to fight with him
for the gun. I mean, I'm not going to be any match, you know, for somebody like that, But at least I thought, you know, if you're gonna I'm gonna die trying. So I'm fighting with him for this gun. And then I can remember being smashed on the head with the better the gun and then falling on the floor.
And bearing in mind, this was a Friday.
Afternoon, twenty past two in the afternoon, a busy friday in a salon. There was a couple of old people under the dryer. There was people sat at stations having their head and you know, it's not like anyone.
Did anyone to try and help you, No, would.
You have kneel, fair play to you. But yeah, there was nobody coming in last shop that day, right, So I can remember then being on the floor because he took me with the better the gun and I'd fallen on the floor. And then I can remember pulling the reception desk had gone over near me, and I pulled that over me, which he booted away. There was an old lady on the floor, Connie, who was in her nineties, and you know, they don't they don't make him like they used to. And she's shouting at him.
Go on, get out here, get out here. She was shouting, and she was like a war baby. You know.
She was in the landown you and all that, you know, and she was shouting at Darren. And then I can remember looking down and seeing the phone off the receiver and I grabbed grabbed the phone, and I felt as weak as a kitten, and I remember trying to push the buttons down nine ninety nine and then the next thing. Then he was literally stood about four foot away from me. I don't know why. I pulled my knees up under my chin, so I had the presence of mind to
do that. So I was almost in a feetal position, and I said, for fuck's sake, think of Jack, thinking that he'll go in and he'll stop.
What he's doing.
And he literally pointed which would have been my chest if my legs weren't pulled up, and told me he left me and pulled the fist shot. Then I remember it was almost like because people say, you know, what did it feel like being shot? And I said, it was a huge impact. Like the third there was no pain and I remember no pain, no pain whatsoever. And
I can remember thinking, fuck he shot me. And I remember like the gunpowder and almost like a smoky sort of bit from the gun and really smelling gunpowder, and then looking at my jeans and there was a huge hole in there, and I can remember it was almost like like a bright orange sort of liquid that came out and not blood.
And I'm thinking, fuck, he shot me. Shot me.
And then the next thing then there was a blast to the right of me. Whether he pulled it again or you know, it went off. You know, he didn't realize he had gone off. It just went off on his own, but that missed my head. Then the next thing. Then I remember being on the floor and looking to the left of me and seeing this gun on the floor, which is probably about that long, silver with ornate engraving
on it, and I remember grabbing the gun. There must have been a battle for the gun because I had a watch on and if you google the watch, it actually comes up and in every direction of the watch face that is scratched it's almost frosted and it is stopped at twenty past two, so that is when the battle commenced, you know. And so I grabbed I was grabbing this gun and he was trying to get the gun off me. Then the next thing, then he booted me under the chin. And then I can remember him
absolutely pameline me with punches, kicks, stamps, everything. Then the next thing, then he was gone. He was just gone from the shop.
What I don't get is the fact that he's come in. Okay, he's come to kill you.
Okay, yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
But knowing that what I don't get, Like he's coming to kill you. But then has he panicked or did he did he not want to kill you?
To beat you up?
How he did and then run off? But no one's actually trying to stop him anyway? Has he done what he knew? Nobody does with you? And gone? This I've done wrong. I need to get away and cry again.
And I can tell you exactly what he'd have thought, right, because Darren was very methodical, right, so he would have planned and if I look back now, I should have known.
Really did you know he had a gun?
Oh? He had a two two pistol and he didn't have a firearms license, so we had an illegal gun years ago and an arsenal weapons that went to prison for it. You know, you google Darren Williams arsenal weapons and it comes up. So he'd already been done for a firearm. So all these services had dealt with us. Knew what a job he was. Okay, but this was given to him. We still haven't sourced it yet, but it wasn't his gun, so for me, I know Darren's thinking, so he would have planned this, which he did.
The day before.
The dogs were still at the house and his friend come and took the dogs and said, Darren's giving me the dogs.
I thinking, okay.
Then he said can I have his winch Off the land Rover which was in the shed, So I gave him that. So basically Darren's tying up or loose nds. I later found out that he phoned a previous partner and apologized for the way he treated her because, like I said, he was a serial perpetrator.
He had an injunction on him years.
Ago after assaulting this person, and he apologized to her for the way he treated her. So he was sort of tying up loose ends, and Darren had been to prison years ago for the firearms. Darren didn't like prison. He hated prison, Okay, So Darren's thinking would have been, I'm not going to prison for what I'm going to do. So he would have said to himself, I have got a time limit to go in killer, leave the scene before I'm caught, to go and take my own life.
And I know that a friend of mine, and it's only after the sea, after the events, that you find little things out that my friend who works in the National Statistics Office in Wales, and she said one of her friends used to walk her dog every day along the canal and she had found in a bush where the dog was a load of discarded blue rope, and it was not far from where Darren had set up his place to hang from the tree. So that would have been set up days prior to that, because there's
no way Darren would have gone to prison. And I absolutely strongly believed that they would have been planned b somewhere else. Had plan A failed for him to take his own life. So he either come in that shop thinking right, I've got two minutes before the police a year or four minutes, so I've got to be in and out. And I think because I ran towards him, which is something he probably wasn't expecting because most people
do run away or freeze. And because I ran towards him, I that put him on the back foot.
Yeah, h
Mm hmm,