Hunt for mother after minder is shot dead

POLICE are hunting for a mother and her two children who have gone into hiding after a nightclub promoter was shot and his bodyguard killed in a Berkshire village.

Arthur de Souza, 33, is "serious but stable" after he was found in a road at Pangbourne. Bodyguard Al el Hachaidi, 27, died in the grounds of the United Reformed Church in Pangbourne.

Detectives are appealing for information about the woman and her children seen leaving the scene in a red Audi saloon on Saturday night.

Police are questioning a man, 23, from Reading.

Detectives are waiting to interview Mr de Souza, who is in intensive care in the Royal Berkshire Hospital after undergoing an emergency operation to remove bullets in his abdomen.

Local police are understood to have been called earlier in the evening to a house in Pangbourne Mews, bordering the church, but left before the shootings.

Today Pangbourne was coming to terms with the news that not everything that goes on in this Thames-side village fits in with its image of affluent domesticity.

Mr de Sousa owns a music distribution business and is a former nightclub promoter. He lives in a 200,000 bungalow in nearby Tilehurst.

Little is known about him - other than that his wife Simone left him in the New Year, taking their children with her, and is now believed to be on the Isle of Wight.

Nici Hodges, who works at the nearby pub, The Star, said: "The two men were shot getting out of the car - one of them was found on the gravel. My friend's brother-in-law found them. They seem to have been ambushed getting out of the car - the minder must have got out first because he was the one who was killed."

Det Insp Paul Cassell said: "This is a shocking crime committed in a town which has never experienced anything like this before."

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