When a 15-year-old boy met his death in a hail of gunfire as he cycled through a park in Moss Side, Manchester, police came up against a wall of silence.

Detectives were certain that local residents knew who the killer was but were too scared to give the authorities any help for fear of retribution from armed gangs that operate in the area.

Jessie James, a softly spoken teenager who regularly helped his local pastor, was described by police as an innocent victim of gun crime - a boy who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was hit by bullets from a semi-automatic pistol as he stopped to speak to a passer-by in Moss Side community park. He fell from his mountain bike close to a basketball court and died after being hit by three bullets. Two hit his torso and one lodged in his appendix.

For 11 months police worked on the case without getting enough help from the public to make an arrest.

But when Jesse’s inquest opened last August, witnesses were promised unprecedented security that would shield their identities. The inquest was held in a secure court in Manchester that is usually reserved for terrorist trials. Witnesses gave evidence from a secret location and their voices were distorted so that people in the public gallery were unable to recognise them, or even tell if the speaker was male, female, old or young.

The video link was seen only by the coroner, who reassured each witness that he understood that they may feel fearful or apprehensive about giving evidence about the gangs that hold sway in parts of South Manchester.

On the opening day of the hearing a protected witness wrote down the name of a suspect. The witness said that the person had told members of one gang that Jessie James was a member of a rival gang.

The teenager, who could be identified only as witness D, suggested that the suspect’s actions had placed Jessie in danger and that he had been ambushed and shot dead by the Gooch Close Gang several days later as he cycled through the park.

Several months earlier, in a separate case, police took the unusual step of setting up a giant billboard telling potential witnesses that it was safe to come forward after four of Manchester’s most notorious gang members were jailed for armed robbery.

The billboard said “Enough is enough” in large letters, followed by the boast: “These convictions prove it - these men thought they were untouchable and above the law. They relied on people being too scared to stand up against them . . . they were wrong.”

The coroner halted Jessie James’s inquest after police disclosed that they intended to arrest two members of a street gang on suspicion of murder. To date, no one has been charged.

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