Terrified, two young 'hired guns' walked into a notorious Salford pub to kill - they never came home

When two hired guns from Moss Side nervously walked into a packed, notorious pub to carry out a gangland hit, what happened next was so shocking it would send tremors through Manchester's underworld that are still being felt today.

Carlton Alveranga, 20, and Richard Austin, 19, were the would-be assassins who had been sent - almost forced - into one of Salford's toughest pubs to shoot dead a young upstart they didn’t even know.

They were lambs sent to their own slaughter.

Moments after they burst into Brass Handles, where regulars were watching Manchester United beating Newcastle on a busy Sunday lunchtime on March 12, 2006, they were disarmed and shot dead with their own guns. It was described at the time as a 'wild west' shootout.

Fatally injured, the would-be hitmen staggered out of the pub onto a grass croft beside Fitzwarren Street where they collapsed and died.

In a trademark Salford gangland move following any crime inside a pub, someone ripped out the CCTV system and it's not difficult to imagine those inside being told in no uncertain terms never to speak about the horrors that had just transpired.

A well-worn gangland trope barely needed repeating, but none-the-less word went out: this is Salford and no-one speaks to the law. No-one inside the Pendleton pub that day - and there were hundreds - would speak to the police.

A few years later, the unremarkable flat roof pub on Edgehill Close in Pendleton - where LS Lowry reportedly would enjoy a quiet pint - was demolished.

No-one has ever been brought to justice for the killing of Alveranga and Austin, who were believed to be in the debt of the Moss Side gang boss who organised the hit.

That man was Ian McLeod, a founder member of the notorious Doddington crew who