The bloody raid by Salford brothers that led to downfall of one of North West's most powerful gangsters
09.05.2024 - 14:59
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
One of the North West's most influential gangsters saw his empire come crashing down following a violent raid on a stash house.
On the morning of Saturday, May 23, 2020, a brutal armed robbery took place in West Derby, Liverpool. Carried out by a pair of Salford gangsters, it resulted in a father and son being brutally attacked and £1m worth of cocaine stolen, and set off a chain of events leading to the downfall of gangland leader Vincent Coggins.
Coggins was the head of an organised crime group (OCG) involved in distributing large quantities of cocaine and heroin across the UK. Raised in Knowsley's Cantril Farm during the 70s and 80s, Coggins and his brother Francis built their formidable drug gang from scratch, creating a cartel that rivalled criminal factions from Ireland, Eastern Europe and South America, reports the Liverpool Echo.
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The targeted attack, conducted by rival gangsters who knew whose drugs were stashed there, saw the homeowner and his son severely assaulted and huge amounts of cocaine stolen. Vincent Coggins, along with his criminal associates including his right-hand man Edward Jarvis, resolved to identify who had taken them.
But Vincent Coggins did not just want to find them and get his drugs back. He also expressed a desire to kill them. Little did he and his criminal associates know that their every move was being monitored by the authorities following the hack of the EncroChat network.
This would ultimately lead to the gang’s downfall and Vincent Coggins’ arrest and conviction. Now, after nearly four years of extensive reporting restrictions that have prevented the media from being able to identify those