'My dad would never have put his grandkids at risk if he knew someone wanted to kill him'

FAMILY OF SALFORD'S 'MR BIG' BELIEVE POLICE FAILED TO DELIVER A 'THREAT TO LIFE' NOTICE PROPERLY WEEKS BEFORE HE WAS SHOT DEAD

- JOHN SCHEERHOUT

SMILING on a ride at a funfair with three of his grandkids, Salford's 'Mr Big Paul Massey didn't appear to have a care in the world. Six weeks later he was dead, gunned down by a masked assassin on his own doorstep.

Four weeks before his trip to the fair, police had visited Mr Massey's home to deliver a threat-to-life warning, a portent of what was to come. He'd had many such official warnings. There was no answer and cops were told to put it through the letterbox, GMP said following an investigation.

For Mr Massey's family, it was an important document stating his life was in danger. They say it should have been handed to him personally so he could take steps to protect himself. The picture of him enjoying a day out with his grandchildren the following month, they say, is key evidence that shows he never received that warning.

His family has now taken a first step towards a new independent investigation into the intelligence police had about the threat to his life before his July 2015 murder.

Mr Massey received at least five so-called 'Osman' warnings during his life, from 2009 right up until assassin Mark Fellows blasted him to death with an Uzi sub-machine gun on the doorstep of his home in Clifton in July 2015.

The shooting was the culmination of an uberviolent war between a Salford gang known as the A Team - whose members considered Mr Massey a mentor and elder and a rival faction, the Anti A Team. Fellows was jailed for life for the murder of Mr Massey and his gang land enforcer friend John Kinsella.