Shane Gilmer was murdered when his neighbour shot him and his partner – pregnant partner Laura Sugden – with a crossbow, but eight years on she’s praised new ban plans
A mum has emotionally revealed her daughter will never know her dad, after her partner was murdered by a neighbour with a crossbow.
Laura Sugden was five months pregnant when her partner Shane Gilmer was horrifically killed in January 2018. Evil neighbour Anthony Lawrence snuck into the loft space between their homes and waited for the couple to return from a date night, after previously threatening Shane with an axe when they complained about loud music, blaming them for his eviction.
The murderer shot at the pair and pierced Laura, who was pregnant with their draughter Ella, in the head and neck, while Shane was shot in his forearm and abdomen. Laura, from East Yorkshire, miraculously survived and later gave birth to their daughter Ella but today shared the heartbreak she faces as her seven-year-old girl will never “know her dad”.
READ MORE: BBC star opens up about grief after his wife and two daughters murderedREAD MORE: Crossbow sales to be banned in major crackdown after harrowing triple murder
The mum-of-two told the Mirror: “I was pregnant at the time with our daughter you know, she’s never going to know her dad.” Laura said she was “over the moon” after the government announced plans to ban the sale of crossbows and hunting arrows in the wake of several violent attacks which have shocked the nation.
Existing crossbow owners will also need a licence and must pass suitability checks to keep them. There is currently no registration system or licence requirement for owning a crossbow. The mum-of-two launched her campaign for a licensing system with police checks back in 2021, after an inquest into Shane’s tragic murder.
Laura slammed how easy it had been for people to buy one of these deadly weapons. She said: “You can’t go on Amazon and buy a gun, why on earth are you able to go on Amazon and buy a crossbow, because the damage that they cause it’s absolutely horrific.”
Laura, 35, said through her campaign she realised many people did not know the sale of crossbows was legal and shared why these weapons could be more dangerous than knives or guns. She said: “You’ve got somebody that’s going to attack you with a knife, you have got to be in close proximity of that person to be stabbed with that knife.
“You do not have to be close to somebody with a crossbow. You don’t have to anywhere near them and you wouldn’t even need to know that you’re gonna be attacked with one because the scope on them is huge.”
The campaigner said another crucial reason crossbow legislation needed to be passed was the pressure and risk these attacks put on emergency services. Laura said police required an armed response to these attacks and usually a bigger response than for firearms incidents.
She said: “You’re putting officers at risk when they attend an incident like that as well as a victim being at risk And that was a huge problem in mine and Shane’s case, because Shane was alive for quite a couple of hours after he was actually shot.”
Laura added: “Nobody was going to go into a situation in an open area and freely walk into my house to provide medical attention to him, when they didn’t know where Tony Lawrence was. He could have been sat and they wouldn’t have seen him and he could have shot at them. So then that’s what within my campaign I’m sort of saying, there’s so many factors that feeds into this.” Lawrence escaped from the scene and was later found dead in a motorhome.
Eight years on from Shane’s horrific murder, Laura revealed the tragedy still impacts her, saying: “Losing somebody anyway that doesn’t go away ever, more so I think things have been difficult because of the circumstances. It’s not like Shane had an illness, it was something that we couldn’t do anything about.”
She added: “This sort of law doesn’t actually change anything for me because my life has already been affected by the damage of a crossbow. So it’s a bittersweet situation in that I can’t bear to read or see ‘another family has been a victim of a crossbow attack’ and that is one of the main reasons that I did it.”
Laura praised the governments decision and has long campaigned for changes to be made to avoid another tragedy. On BBC racing commentator John Hunt, whose wife and two daughters were murdered in a crossbow and knife attack by Kyle Clifford in July 2024, Laura said: “As soon as I knew that had happened, the sadness and the frustration that I felt for him and his family. This has happened, something’s happened again with the crossbow, like what is going on in this world.”
The Government vowed to toughen rules and launched a consultation on the plans. In a consultation response, published on Thursday, the Home Office it was “concerned how easily these weapons can currently be purchased” so the government will prohibit the sale of crossbows and “introduce further restrictions on crossbows through introducing a licensing scheme for existing crossbow owners”.
The review of the rules was ordered after an attempt the kill the late Queen with the weapon. Would-be assassin Jaswant Singh Chail was encouraged by an AI chatbot to break into Windsor Castle on Christmas Day 2021 with a loaded crossbow to kill the late Queen. The 21-year-old was jailed for nine years in 2023 and handed a further five years on extended licence after admitting treason, making a threat to kill the then Queen, and having a loaded crossbow.
