Shoppers’ terror at Sunday shooting

THE bloody victim of a gangland-style shooting hobbled into a packed clothes shop and pleaded for help as gun crime made an unwelcome return to Camden Town on Saturday.
Police made four arrests within an hour of a single shot ringing out outside the MTV studios in Hawley Crescent.
A man in his 20s had been shot in the leg with a converted replica gun just after 6pm as the nearby High Street thronged with tourists and shoppers.
Shocked staff at Scorpion Shoes hid the victim in a storeroom after he ran into their shop and pleaded for help.
One, who asked not to be named, said: “He had a baseball cap and chino trousers on and you could see the blood coming out of the back of his calf muscle.
“He said he had been shot but when the police asked if he knew who had done it he became shaky and vague.”
He was kept in the shop for 45 minutes while paramedics attended to his wound and police quizzed him, before being led out on a stretcher and taken to a north London hospital, where his condition is described a stable.
Three men were seen in handcuffs with police standing on the corner of Jamestown Road and Camden High Street within an hour of the shooting.
All three and a fourth man were bailed to return to a Camden police station next month after further enquiries by Operation Trident, the Metropolitan Police’s so-called “black on black” crime unit.
Despite claims to the contrary just six months ago from Town Hall crime czar Anthony Brooks – the former Camden police chief – gun-crime has been on the rise in Camden.
Overall crime is falling but violent crime and gun-enabled crime, which includes the use of other, lesser firearms including CS spray, continue to rise, although they are still well below levels in other London boroughs like Brent and Lambeth.
It is nearly two years since the last serious shooting incident in Camden Town – when an off-duty police officer narrowly dodged a bullet in Jamestown Road.
A gunman left a man and a woman in need of urgent medical attention after shooting them outside the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead last March.

• Plans to introduce legislation banning replica guns were announced by the Government yesterday.