Two teenage girls, Charlene Ellis, 18, and Letisha Shakespeare, 17, were shot with a MAC-10 machine pistol, outside a hair salon in Birchfield Road, Aston, Birmingham, England, as they were leaving a party in the early hours of 2 January 2003, in a gang-related drive-by shooting.
Marcus Ellis, 24 (Charlene's half-brother), Michael Gregory, 22, and Nathan Martin, 26 (brother of Yohanne[4]), were jailed for a minimum of 35 years.
[4] The mothers of the two dead women, Marcia Shakespeare and Beverley Thomas, have since actively campaigned against gun crime and gangs.
[3] They set up the 'Letisha and Charlene Education Awards', administered by the Birmingham & Black Country Community Foundation, a registered charity,[6] in 2006.
[4] In December 2016 it was announced that Marcia Shakespeare had been appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours.