A Southall man was convicted of attempted murder after police accessed Facebook messages that linked him to the shooting.

Firad Muhammed 28 (24.05.94) of Ellison Gardens, Southall, travelled to an address in Bromley on 20 October 2020. He knocked on the door and when the victim, a 32-year-old man, answered, he shot him twice on the legs and fled.

There was no obvious motive for the shooting, so Met detectives Ben Briselden and Imran Hansraj carried out extensive phone analysis.

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Their investigation found incriminating Facebook messages between Muhammed and the victim's wife.

Many of the messages were flirtatious or romantic in nature, but included one stating that Muhammad regretted coming to the victim's home address and shooting him.

Muhammed was arrested and charged with attempted murder and possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. He was found guilty of both offences after a trial in July 2022 and was sentenced to 28 years' imprisonment at Inner London Crown Court on Friday, 18 November 2022. He must serve at least two thirds of his sentence in jail.

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Detective Constable Ben Briselden, the officer in the case, said, "Muhammed travelled to the victim's home address with the intention to kill him."

"When we started the investigation, there were no leads and we had to build the case through detailed mobile phone analysis."

"This could easily have been a murder investigation and I hope the sentence allows the victim, who has now made a full recovery, to move on with his life in the knowledge Muhammed is not going to be out of prison for a very long time."

DC Briselden and his colleague DC Imran Hansraj, who undertook the phone examination which cracked the case, received commendations from the judge in the case

Judge Ian Darling said during sentencing, "In this investigation there is no doubt they (the police) started from scratch and built a case painstakingly and thoroughly."

"The investigation into the shooting was fraught with difficulty, it seems no one was keen to tell the police anything of the truth."

"The Met Police had no active leads on which to investigate the shooting and were completely in the dark."

"The police set about a particularly onerous and impressive trawl through phone contacts to try and identify potential suspects. It was by its nature a slow and thankless task which thankfully and to the credit of the investigate officers finally bore fruit."