protection and other agencies, appears to have been effective in cutting gang related firearms incidents. 1999-2009 Imprisonment of the Gooch gang Ten members of south Manchester's Gooch gang were put on trial in October 2008 for a catalogue of gang-related crimes. Gang members Colin Joyce and Lee Amos had been arrested in 2000, when they had been apprehended at their 'nerve centre' in a house in Moss Side, found with an 'extraordinary array of firearms'. In 2001, they had been sentenced to nine years in prison but had been released early, on licence, in 2007 and there had followed a new bout of shootings. In April 2009, Joyce and Amos were among 11 members of the 'Gooch gang' who were found guilty of a 'catalogue of crimes' they had been charged with, which included the murders of Ucal Chin and Tyrone Gilbert. These convictions were hailed by Manchester's chief prosecutor, John Holt, as having 'enormous significance for public safety'. Their trials were held 35 miles away at Liverpool Crown Court to lower the risk of witness intimidation from other gang members. Not unusually, the perpetrators of gun crime were also victims of it, with Amos's brother Stephen Baba-Tunde Amos having been shot dead aged 21 in a gang-related shooting outside a bar in Ashton-under-Lyne in 2002. Colin Joyce, aged 29, known as the leader of the gang, was given a minimum 39-year sentence. Lee Amos was sentenced to receive at least 35 years. Three other members of the gang were given minimum sentences of between 30 and 35 years. Shootings in Stretford and Longsight Optimism about the reduction in gun crime in the south Manchester area was tarnished by the shooting dead of 16-year-old Ardwick resident Giuseppe Gregory outside the Robin Hood pub in Stretford on 10 May 2009. He was someone who had been noted for an association with gang members and police had sought to warn him of the dangers by delivering a note to his home address in November 2008, in accordance with Operation Cougar policy of treating potential young gang members as children at risk. Following the shooting, there was some apprehension about the possibility of reprisals but shootings continue to be at an historically low level, with only one fatal gang related shooting in 15 months. On 3 December 2009 Khurram Ashraf, a 30-year-old student, was shot outside a money exchange in Longsight, later dying