london Turnmills Shooting - Official Statement (Sunday 20th April 2003)

[SarahPVC]

Turnmills Official Statement

Sunday 20th April 2003

By now you will all have probably heard about the incident that took place in and around Clerkenwell Road on Sunday night, April 20th. The night in question was Sexy & Stylish which featured RnB music in the main room, with a live PA by solo artist Lisa Maffia - who had cancelled her performance earlier in the day due to a bout of flu.

With the current threat of terrorism around the world and the increase in gun crime in the UK (there were no less than 8 separate gun crime incidents alone over the Easter Weekend, mostly in London), rest assured that we had carried out every possible safety precaution to make sure the night went as smoothly as it possibly could. Unfortunately, a great party inside was spoiled by an armed gang (who we must stress, were not our customers) who then stormed the club at a side entrance and went inside the building. Fortunately none of our staff, security or any of our customers were seriously injured. As a safety precaution we were therefore forced to cease the night and evacuate the club.

After this there was a separate incident involving two groups of men who were then seen travelling at high speed in two separate cars towards Holborn, where shots were fired and one man was fatally injured. As you can appreciate, this was a matter totally out of our control and sadly it seems to be a growing concern in London at the moment for incidents of this nature to take place.

We know that the promoters have been trying really hard to nurture this night for a number of months now and it had been doing so successfully for the past 22 weeks. The promoters had started a new RnB / U.S House music policy and were working tirelessly on a new crowd and musical direction. The promoters had been putting everything into the night and it was definitely growing into a strong event. We were very pleased with the efforts being made and the night and the crowd on the whole had been fantastic and a pleasure to work with and host.

Unfortunately you can never vouch for outside forces who are hell bent on causing destruction and violence. We are now very sorry to say that the night in question will be cancelled with immediate effect and we are very shocked and saddened by the incident that happened last Sunday night.

We are also very disheartened in general because of all the hard work and effort we put into Turnmills on the whole as a venue, and anyone reading this will hopefully sympathise with the events that happened to us over the past week. This has no bearing on all the other wonderful promotions that have taken place, unaffected week in week out over the past 10 years at Turnmills, including clubs like The Gallery, Trade, City Loud and Metrogroove.

To reassure all our regular customers, Turnmills will continue operating as normal this weekend. Tickets have nearly sold out for The Gallery and The Boutique's Birthday that will be taking place on Friday and Saturday respectively.

Finally, would like to apologise about the current lack of communication through email and telephone calls up to now; as you can appreciate we have been inundated with hundreds of calls and it's simply not possible to answer them all. We are all now slowly settling back into work and we will do our level best to answer any questions or concerns you may have. We also hope to see as many of you as possible throughout the weekend, as we get back down to business of having fun on the dancefloor.

Peace, Love and Respect

From everybody at Turnmills x

For further information, please contact Danny Newman on 020 7324 3393