Boxing Trainer Shot By Teenage Hoodie

A well-known Liverpool boxing trainer spoke today of the moment he was shot in the legs by a teenage hoodie.

Kenneth “Kenny” Willis was blasted with a “magnum-style” gun as he answered the front door at his partner’s terraced house in Huyton.

The 54-year-old former trainer at St Aloysius Gym told the ECHO he had been trying to protect his partner Patricia Hughes and her three children from a local gang.

His attacker fired two shots through the front door in Butleigh Road as Mr Willis – who hit the headlines in 2010 after being jailed for 18 months over illegal money lending – dived for cover. His partner’s teenage daughter was upstairs.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Mr Willis – who trained Olympian Tom Stalker and dozens of other fighters – said a gang of teenagers gathered around the house on the afternoon of March 13.

He said the group were armed with sticks, one throwing a bike at the property while others threatened to “smoke” the family and “petrol bomb” the house.

He said: “I asked a friend to come round to get the kids out of the house because we were scared they were going to petrol bomb us.”

Ms Hughes added: “Kenny said ‘we have to get the kids out.’ We shoved clothes in a bag and got the kids away from the estate, but my 17-year-old Robin was still in college so Kenny went back for her.”

Mr Willis said he returned to the house around 7pm to collect Robin but as he shouted to her, he heard a crack.

“I turned the hall light on, turned around and opened the door, and there’s this kid. He’s on the road and he pulls out this gun. It was like a magnum. He couldn’t even hold it, he was that little.

“So he held it with both hands, trying to keep it steady.

“He points it at me, and blasts it. I go to close the door and dived out the way. Two shots came through the door as he shouts something.

“I tried to run out of the front of the house, and then heard Robin scream, and turned around – I thought they were climbing into the house to get her.

“I tried to get to her, but I looked down and saw my muscle hanging out of my leg.

“The gun fired twice, one came in my right leg, exploded out of the other side and ripped the front on my left leg off. The blood was unbelievable, it was everywhere, I lost two units of blood.”

Mr Willis said the trouble had started when his partner’s son had been beaten up by local kids, attacking him as he got off the school bus.

After the couple later intervened, one came to their house with a gun on their son’s 13th birthday.

Mr Willis was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2010 which he served in part until December after successfully appealing against one charge of affray.

The Huyton man said: “I’m no angel and I know I’ve got a history, but no family deserves this. My partner’s boy or baby girl could have been killed.”

Speaking beside her partner’s hospital bed, Ms Hughes said her family had been forced from their home.

She added: “I can’t go back to that house and I’ve spent every penny on it to get it nice. We’ve been there for 10 years and now there’s bullet holes in my front door.

“And my kids are in bits. We’ve been waking up crying, screaming. The kids have been sobbing their hearts out, they just want it all to be over.”

Merseyside police have arrested and bailed a 16-year-old following the attack.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/teen-hoodie-shoots-well-known-liverpool-6980976#.U0mfsP8eQYI.twitter

Liverpool..........

This type of scumbag should be drowned at birth.

Makes a compelling case for the introduction of eugenics.

I lived in Liverpool when that kid got the ice pick in the head....in Huyton.

Few scumbags in that part by the sound of it. Apart from that I was treated well when there.

Liverpool has some of the nicest people I've met anywhere in the world, but like everywhere it has it's idiots. This is just one of them, he is a very lucky man though.

You reckon he would do an interview after he's healed up mate? Would be a compeling listen.

I can try and get in touch, I'll speak to Tom see if he has contact details.