US detectives are investigating how two British friends came to be shot dead on holiday in Florida

US detectives are investigating how two British friends came to be shot dead on holiday in Florida, several miles from any recognised tourist area.

James Kouzaris, 24, from Northampton, and James Cooper, 25, of Warwick, were found shot dead 50ft from each other in a street in the city of Sarasota.

A 16-year-old boy has been charged with two counts of murder after the friends from university were found on Saturday.

Tutors from Sheffield remembered them as enthusiastic and positive students.

'Always happy'
Sarasota police said there was no known link between the suspect and the victims, who were found shot dead early on Saturday local time in the Newtown area of northern Sarasota.

They were murdered in a deprived part of Sarasota and local officers said it was "very unusual" to find tourists in this area.


The two friends had been staying on the island city of Longboat Key, about 12 miles from where they were found and pronounced dead from gunshot wounds.

Sarasota police said the former University of Sheffield students were not carrying drugs but would not confirm whether they had any money or weapons.

Ed Ferrari, Research Fellow from the university's Department of Town and Regional Planning, said Mr Kouzaris was committed to his studies and his "his positive outlook and humour were infectious".

The tutor said: "He was just the sort of student any lecturer would hope to have in their class."

Mr Kouzaris spent several months travelling in South America before his death, visiting Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Bolivia.

He was on a three-week holiday in Florida staying with Mr Cooper and his family.


Mr Cooper worked as a tennis coach for inspire2coach, a company based at the University of Warwick.

Dr Jon Burchell, Senior Lecturer from the University of Sheffield's Management School, said Mr Cooper was a hard-working student and "popular among his peers".

The tutor said: "He had a good sense of humour and a range of plans for what he wanted to do after graduation."

Friends and family said Mr Kouzaris, who was known as Jam, "lived every day to the fullest", in tributes on his Facebook page.

His cousin Lynn Hucker wrote: "To a beautiful cousin who I will never forget. Always happy and full of life."

The Foreign Office said next of kin had been informed, consular staff were providing assistance and Sarasota police had launched an investigation and made an arrest.

Captain Paul Sutton, from Sarasota Police Department, said the men were in an area not usually visited by tourists

Danielle Lloyd yesterday told jurors a suspected armed robber was with her the night he was accused of raiding a building society for £80,000.

Danielle Lloyd yesterday told jurors a suspected armed robber was with her the night he was accused of raiding a building society for £80,000.

Craig Mason, 32, was allegedly part of a gang which netted more than £161,000 at two branches of Nationwide.

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But Miss Lloyd, 27, told the court she was with Mason at a party in London on the night of one of the raids in Brightlingsea, Essex. Miss Lloyd, who met the defendant in Marbella in 2007, added she stayed at a friend’s house and Mason, of Hornchurch, Essex, slept on a settee.

She added: “I remember we had a few drinks and then we went to sleep.”

Mason, who denies conspiracy to rob, told Snaresbrook crown court yesterday: “I’ve never played no part in a bank robbery.” The trial continues.

bust targets members of the Italian Mafia and biker gangs.

A major police operation targeting drug traffickers with ties to organized crime began in several regions of Quebec on Tuesday morning.

Cops are expecting to arrest dozens of people, mostly in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, but also in the North Shore, Montreal, Trois-Rivieres and Quebec City.

The bust targets members of the Italian Mafia and biker gangs.

This follows a 20-month investigation by RCMP, provincial cops and Saguenay police.

fugitive murderer has been convicted of killing a young father in Essex in front of his children and fleeing to the "Costa del Crime".

Killer James Tomkins, 61, lived in exile under an assumed identity on the Costa del Sol, Spain, after the "brutal execution" of 24-year-old Rocky Dawson.

Mr Dawson was shot several times in the back as he put the children, aged two and six, in his Fiat Punto on the drive of the family's home in Hornchurch in 2006.

After several years on the run, Tomkins, who was named as one of Britain's 10 most wanted criminals in 2008, was traced to near Marbella and extradited.

He was found guilty of murder by a jury at Woolwich Crown Court and will be sentenced on Monday.

Tomkins shot Mr Dawson from a dark-blue Land Rover Freelander vehicle which drove past as the attack took place. The children were unharmed during the incident.

Tomkins' accomplice Christopher Pearman, of Waltham Abbey, received a life sentence for the murder at the same court in 2007.

Detective Inspector Mark Lawson said: "This was a brutal execution of a totally innocent young man in what we believe to have been a case of mistaken identity.

"He was gunned down in front of his two children who were lucky to have escaped uninjured. Aged just six and two years at the time they undoubtedly still carry the scars of that fateful day in 2006."

Candy Dawson, Mr Dawson's mother, added: "Rocky will always live on in our memory and our hearts

THE director of Fuengirola TV, Diaz Rincon, has been charged with alleged corruption and influence peddling

THE director of Fuengirola TV, Diaz Rincon, has been charged with alleged corruption and influence peddling. General Secretary of the local PSOE, Javier Garcia Leon, explained that the corruption charges stem from the director providing services to the local government through his private company.

The influence peddling refers to his relationship with Mayor Esperanza Oña to allegedly get various contracts for his production company.

These crimes could be punishable by up to two years in prison and a hefty fine.

17 year old Moroccan has died after being stabbed by another of the same nationality after an argument in the Era de Cieza football ground

17 year old Moroccan has died after being stabbed by another of the same nationality after an argument in the Era de Cieza football ground on Saturday afternoon.

La Verdad reports that the victim died in the Virgen de la Arrixaca Hospital in Murcia after emergency surgery.

The Cieza Guardia Civil have arrested the aggressor, although his identity has not been released. It says that when the argument started he went to his home to return with the knife, and then stabbed the victim in his chest, close to the heart. The newspaper reports that he then confessed to his mother what he had done.

Both victim and aggressor are said to have lived in the old part of Cieza for some time, and it is not the first time they have been involved in fights.

Baxendale then fled the country on a ferry and travelled to southern Spain where he had been jailed for a previous murder in 2001.

convicted killer who carried out a ferocious attack on a Nutfield woman, stabbing her to death, has been jailed for life for her murder.

David Baxendale, 40, subjected 38-year-old mother-of-three Sarah Thomas to a “sustained and savage attack” in her flat just hours after meeting her.

She suffered multiple injuries, including a fatal knife wound to the neck, in the brutal assault in May last year.

Baxendale then fled the country on a ferry and travelled to southern Spain where he had been jailed for a previous murder in 2001.

The murder hunt launched by Surrey Police's Major Crime Investigation Team pinpointed Baxendale as the prime suspect, and detectives tracked his movements through Europe.

He was caught in Spain when a holidaymaker recognised him from a media appeal.

He was arrested by local police and extradited back to Britain to face justice.

Baxendale, who has a history of violence dating back 20 years, was found guilty of murder by a jury at Guildford Crown Court following a three-week trial, and was sentenced to a whole-life term.

The court heard that at the time of her death, Miss Thomas was living in a flat at The Spinning Wheel building in Nutfield, and was known to keep company with a number of people who had alcohol-related or other anti-social problems.

On the afternoon of May 10 last year, she met Baxendale at a friend's flat in Redhill and the pair caught a taxi back to her flat at around 5pm.

Miss Thomas' boyfriend David Bowden tried to call her as he was worried for her safety, but by the time he got to the flat, he found her lying on the living room floor covered in blood.

Although the emergency services arrived shortly after, they were unable to revive her and she died at the scene.

Baxendale, who had been drinking during the day, was spotted running from the building and witnesses saw him in the Nutfield area over the next 90 minutes.

A knife, which was found to have both his and Miss Thomas' blood on it, was later found near a tree, and a plastic bag containing his blood-stained jacket was found under a bench in a garden.

Baxendale ran through fields and paths before eventually catching a taxi to Walton-on-the-Hill, where his mother lived.

A bag, hidden in a hedge in a nearby lane, was discovered later, containing a T-shirt and jeans with the defendant's DNA on them, and a pair of trainers stained with Miss Thomas' blood.

Baxendale's fingerprints were also found in his victim's blood by the window of her flat and on the neck of a Bacardi bottle.

The day after the murder, he made his way to Portsmouth, where he was seen shaving his head in the public toilets of a local shopping centre.

He later used his brother's passport to book a one-way ticket to St Malo in France, leaving on a ferry that evening.

He gradually made his way to Fuengirola near Marbella in Spain, where he was arrested on June 21 after a member of the public recognised him as a man he had met in a bar while on holiday.

Baxendale was flown back to Heathrow accompanied by Surrey officers, and declined to be interviewed.

The court heard he had a number of previous convictions for violence involving knives, and was sentenced to 11 years in Spain in 2001 for the murder of an associate who he had stabbed 14 times while under the influence of drink and drugs.

He was deported back to the UK in June 2008 and released from prison in September 2009 to be placed under the care of Surrey Probation Service.

Just five days before Sarah Thomas' murder, Baxendale threatened to kill another woman who he had met while attending Probation, and who had stopped returning his calls.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Hayes, who led the investigation, said: "This was a truly tragic case.”

Det Chief Insp Hayes said: “Sarah Thomas was the victim of a sustained and savage attack in her own home at the hands of a man she had only just met that afternoon.

"The number of injuries she suffered and the ferocity used was truly shocking.”

He continued: "David Baxendale already had a history of offences involving knives spanning the last 20 years, including a previous conviction for murder.

"He is clearly an extremely dangerous and callous individual whose propensity for violence knows no bounds.

James Tomkins (61) murdered Rocky Dawson in front of his children and then fled to the Costa del Sol resort of Puerto Banus hit-man hid out in Spain for four years using the names Michael Lynch, Ronald Farmer and O’Flynn.

British contract killer who used a fake Irish passport to flee to Spain has been sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison following an international investigation. The hit-man hid out in Spain for four years using the names Michael Lynch, Ronald Farmer and O’Flynn.

James Tomkins (61) murdered Rocky Dawson in front of his children and then fled to the Costa del Sol resort of Puerto Banus, in Spain, using a fake Irish passport. Having murdered the 24-year-old father, in what police believe was a case of mistaken identity, in 2008 Tomkins was listed as one of Britain’s ten most wanted criminals by the Serious Organised Crime Agency in Operation Captura, a group set up to find fugitive hiding out in Spain.

Last August, Metropolitan Police issued a reward of $32,232 (£20,000) for the capture of the contract killer and launched an extensive manhunt. Appeals were also made on the BBC TV show “Crimewatch." He was soon traced to Marbella, arrested and extradited.

Within three months of the murder, Tomkins fled to Spain using a fake Irish passport in the name of Michael Lynch. He spent four years leading a relaxed lifestyle in the south of Spain with the help of a network of well-connected friends. The police found the fake Irish passport with him when they tracked him down last August.

Tomkins, nicknamed “Jimbles," was found guilty after a two-week trial at Woolich Crown Court and has now been sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison. The  Daily Mail reported that he showed no emotion when he was convicted. He has denied any involvement in the murder. The verdict was met by cheers from Dawson’s family.

Dawson was shot in cold blood, in the back, as he put his children, aged two and six, into his car on the driveway of his parent’s home. Tomkins shot Dawson from the passenger seat of a Land Rover Freelander. He opened fire with a handgun in what is being described as a “deliberate, calculated and cold-blooded” drive-by shooting on May 2, 2006. His associated who drove the vehicle, Christopher Pearman, was captured in 2006 and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Lawyer for the prosecution, Martin Heslop, said “there remains a terrible possibility that Rocky Dawson's killers had mistaken him for someone else ... You may think this murder has all the hallmarks of a contract killing, an assassination or execution.

“It was clearly very carefully planned in advance.

“Tomkins and Pearman plainly knew where Rocky Dawson's parents lived and he was a regular visitor to that address.

“The two men were sufficiently confident to shoot him as he tended to his children, no doubt thinking their victim's attention would be on his children rather than passing cars.”

Having spent four years in the south of Spain, Tomkins had changed his appearance dramatically. He had cut his hair, which had grayed, short and shaved his beard. Having become aware that the police were after him he rarely went out during the day in the summer season when British tourists might recognize him.

A police source told the Daily Mail: “He could have walked past 1,000 times and I wouldn't have recognized him.”

Plain-clothes police from Madrid and Malaga stormed his address in Puerto Banus after a tip-off. The hit-man attempted to escape by jumping out of a window but was trailed by a helicopter and the police on the ground. He was extradited to Britain on September 15, 2010.

LIVERPOOL drugs baron Curtis Warren was today told he will stay in jail for years to come

LIVERPOOL drugs baron Curtis Warren was today told he will stay in jail for years to come after unanimously losing his final appeal against his conviction for a £1m cannabis plot.

In a judgement lasting no more than a minute, the five Law Lords of the Privy Council today condemned the Toxteth-born gangster to the confines of his cell at HMP Belmarsh for at least the next five years.

The Law Lords, led by the Right Hon Lord Dyson, listened to a day-and-a-half of legal submissions last month before taking six weeks to decide on Warren’s fate.

And this morning, in the Supreme Court on London’s Parliament Square, they announced they would be advising Her Majesty the Queen, in whose name Privy Council decisions are made, to reject the appeal.


Warren, 47, was not in court to hear the judgement handed down as the building was deemed not secure enough to hold Interpol’s former Target One.

Warren is currently serving 13 years behind bars after being convicted on the Channel Island of Jersey of masterminding a £1m cannabis smuggling plot.

He was arrested in July 2007, little more than a month after he was freed from serving 10 years in various Dutch prisons for drug trafficking.

Slades were married in the 1998 and lived with their five children in the Spanish resort of Puerto Banus between 2001 and 2005 before returning to West Yorkshire.

Paul Greaney, prosecuting, told Teesside Crown Court how the pair were married in the 1998 and lived with their five children in the Spanish resort of Puerto Banus between 2001 and 2005 before returning to West Yorkshire.

They rented a £2,200 a month house on Norfolk Road, Harrogate, before moving to the lavish home on Sandmoor Drive.

Mr Greaney said the ownership of the property was disguised in the name of one of Slade’s associates but “in truth it belonged to Dennis Slade himself”.

The couple spent £110,000 over a three year period on sending their five children to a well known fee paying independent school in North Yorkshire.

The barrister said the couple owned a Bentley Continental which had originally belonged to pop star Jamirouquai.

The vehicle was first seen parked on the couple’s drive on Valentine’s birthday on April 27, 2007.

It had the registration plate 30MV.

Mr Greaney said it was obvious that Slade had bought it for his wife’s birthday.

The couple also had use of a Porsche Cayenne Turbo, worth £53, 000.

Lavish spending over a three year period included spending £16,000 in 2006 on trips to Dubai where Valentine boasted on Facebook that she had use of a butler.

Valentine and her children also visited Portugal, Paris, Spain and Ibiza as well as a family trip to St Tropez where they had use of a villa and a yatch.

During 2007 £15,000 was spent of trips to Geneva, Spain, Florida and a stay at Claridges.

Luxury goods found at their home included a mobile phone worth £2,350. Valentine also had Christian Doir and Chanel store cards which were used regularly including spending 2,000 Euros in a handbag.

Britons in Spain have just launched an appeal against their conviction for killing an ex-pat playboy criminal, Colin Nobes,

Britons in Spain have just launched an appeal against their conviction for killing an ex-pat playboy criminal, Colin Nobes, whose body was dumped, wrapped in a tarpaulin, under a flyover in the province of Alicante in 2006.