The hairstyle had changed, but it was the same person.

The short cropped hair had been replaced with a long, curly mop.

Despite nearly ten years having passed, Abdul Ahsan could not avoid his past any longer.

For those intervening years, he had done his level best to avoid the consequences of a shocking and brutal crime. Ahsan, then an 18-year-old college student with a side-line as a drugs courier, entered the criminal underworld at Premier League level.

Ahsan shot dead a well-known member of the Gooch Gang, one of Manchester’s most infamous street outfits. From a place of obscurity, with no criminal record, Ahsan became the subject of an international manhunt. A £10,000 reward was offered for any tips which led to his capture.

The motive for the killing remains a mystery. Ahsan claimed to have been a ‘friend’ of Andre Marshall. In turn, Andre appeared to get on with Ahsan, and trusted him enough to act as a courier handling drugs and cash.

But he was betrayed in the most appalling of circumstances, in a shooting with all the hallmarks of a gangland execution. Andre was double crossed, with Ahsan likely being recruited by his enemies to pull the trigger.

He was 29 when he was blasted seven times at close range by Ahsan, who then proceeded to brutally pistol whip him in a car park near a church in Urmston, Trafford, before dumping him there. Tragically, his partner was pregnant at the time, and he would never see his son born.

The Gooch Gang is a name which brings back memories of the bad old days of Manchester in the 1990s, the Gunchester era which has since thankfully become resigned to the city’s history. It is a name which is seldom heard in the 2020s in Manchester’s courts.

But Abdul Ahsan’s name has rung out in Manchester’s courts over the years, even if he was not there himself. Two of his friends were jailed in 2016 for their part in trying to help Ahsan cover up his crime.

But finally, Ahsan was there to face the music, after being extradited from his bolthole in Pakistan. After being found guilty of Andre’s murder, Ahsan was ordered to spend at least 28 years behind bars. He will be in his 50s when he will be eligible for consideration for release.

For many, 2015 feels like a lifetime ago. David Cameron was the prime minister. Britain was still a member of the European Union. Louis van Gaal managed Manchester United, while Manuel Pellegrini was in the hot seat at Manchester City. But ever since, Andre Marshall’s loved ones have longed for justice in his name.

It was in May of that year that a horrendous crime was committed, the effects of which continue to ripple until this day. Andre Marshall, known to his friends as Dre, was 29 that month.

He had grown up in south Manchester, around Chorlton and Old Trafford, under the guidance of his mother and grandmother. He had stayed on at school and had begun to study A Levels, but from about the age of 16 he became involved in crime.

In 2008, when he was 22, he was sentenced to seven years in jail for assault and possessing a firearm. Andre and another man had used a submachine gun to threaten another man at Moss Side leisure centre.

At the time he was taken off the streets, Andre was said to have been a ‘leading’ member of the Gooch, the M.E.N. previously reported. Around that time, gun toting gangs continued to strike terror across the city in a seemingly never ending struggle over territory and turf.

But the following year the Gooch was smashed, never to regain its reputation and power. 11 of its members, including its two leaders, were brought to justice in court.

Gooch leaders Colin Joyce and Lee Amos, who at the time were described by a senior cop as psychopaths who fired guns for fun, were jailed for life. Joyce had shot dead 23-year-old Ucal Chin in Longsight in 2007, after pulling up in an Audi and opening fire.

Chain was killed because Amos and Joyce believed he was a member of rival gang the Longsight Crew. Then weeks later, Joyce and Amos, along with three other senior gang members, targeted Chin’s wake in a drive-by shooting which claimed the life of Tyrone Gilbert, 24.

In 2009, Joyce, then 29, was jailed for life and told he would serve a minimum of 39 years, while Amos was handed a 35 year term on a life sentence. The convictions marked the beginning of the end for the gang, and with it, Greater Manchester Police reported that the number of shootings across the city dropped dramatically.

Andre served his time. When he was released, the city he had known prior to his incarceration, fuelled by gang rivalry and postcode wars, was a different place.

His friends and family hoped that his release would allow him the chance to turn a page, and stay away from crime. But by 2015, it appeared that he had returned to his old ways.

In court it was claimed that he had been involved in drug dealing. In May 2015, just days before he was murdered, Andre had been arrested on suspicion of a firearms offence. An investigation did not establish his involvement in any offence, and he was granted bail.

In a grim twist of fate, among the first people he called for help on May 19 after being granted his freedom, was the man who would go on to kill him just hours later.

In 2015, Abdul Ahsan lived on Upper Chorlton Road with his family. One of five children, he had attended Chorlton High School and went on to enrol in an accountancy course at South Trafford college.

Assisted by his father, he set up a garage where he would sell used tyres and spare parts for cars. His side hustle would earn him up to £400 a week.

But it wasn’t enough. He came to know Andre through a friend of one of his brothers. The pair seemed to get on, and soon enough Ahsan began carrying out ‘favours’ for him.

Secluded by the allure of ‘easy money’, his jobs including collecting or dropping off cash and drugs did not come with the sweat and grit associated with his work at the garage. With no previous convictions to his name, Ahsan would likely have been an appealing candidate for such work. He was unknown to the police, and more able to keep under the radar.

Ahsan appeared to enjoy the lifestyle, rubbing shoulders with more sophisticated criminals. He was not regarded as a gang member himself.

After being released from custody, Andre called Ahsan. His BMW was in for repairs at Ahsan’s garage in Denton, and he wanted his car back. The pair connected and arrangements were made. Later that day, Ahsan met up in Chorlton with Andre.

They went their separate ways for a time. Ahsan and Danny Shahid, a childhood friend, drove to Urmston at 11pm, before returning to their native Old Trafford half an hour later.

It was a journey, revealed by the pair’s cell site data, that later stuck out to detectives. Neither had been to Urmston over the past fortnight, and it was a fair distance away from their usual stomping grounds in south Manchester.

It was a ‘recce’, to scope out the area. Around the same time, a VW car was left nearby which was to be Ahsan’s getaway vehicle later that night. At some stage, Ahsan had subtlety and secretly armed himself with a .45 Colt-type self-loading handgun.

Later on, Ahsan met up with Andre again in his BMW. Andre’s cousin Timothy Marshall had been in the car, as had Kadell Rivers, another pal of Ahsan.

Andre dropped off Rivers and his cousin, leaving only himself and Ahsan in the car as the clock ticked closer to midnight. Ahsan got in the front, and Andre drove towards Urmston. Although he did not know it, he was driving into a trap.

During the journey, Ahsan was receiving a series of text messages from an unregistered phone number. He then made a 24 second call to Rivers, the last call which he made using that number.

At about 42 minutes past midnight, Andre turned off Stretford Road and onto Manor Avenue, where he stopped in a car park marked for ‘church and hall use only’. St Clement’s church sits directly behind it, and the car park is overlooked by flats.

It was late enough that most residents were in bed. But some could not fail to have been roused by the sound of screaming, and a series of bangs.

Within a few seconds, Ahsan had pulled out the gun and opened fire, hitting Andre seven times. The first flurry of shots came while Andre remained in the car, and a second when he had somehow managed to get out in a desperate bid to escape.

Even after firing so many bullets, Ahsan was not done yet. He moved around the car and began brutally pistol-whipping Andre to the head, making sure he was dead.

Leaving Andre where he was, Ahsan’s escape plan bound into action. He got in the getaway car. Ahsan entrusted his pals to move the BMW to a safe place. They hid it in Fallowfield. But police later discovered the car, and inside it, damning evidence implicating Ahsan.

The BMW was covered in his blood, and in the process of shooting Andre, Ahsan had cut his left thumb. The following morning, as Andre’s body was discovered, his devastated family sought answers. Knowing that he had been with Ahsan that night, they confronted him and asked him what had happened. The police were also in attendance for a meeting with the family.

But Ahsan lied, claiming that he had been dropped off earlier that night near the Quadrant in Stretford. He repeated that false story in a police interview, initially given as a witness. After being asked to provide an account of such a traumatic event, later that day Ahsan, Shahid and Rivers travelled to the Trafford Centre, spending £670 between them at the Armani store.

When he was arrested on suspicion of murder on May 26, Ahsan gave the same account. But CCTV footage proved that while humans have the capacity for invention, the camera never lies. No such drop off ever took place.

Two days later, on May 28 2015, Ahsan was granted bail. He decided he did not want to hang around to learn his fate.

Instead he fled to Pakistan, where he remained until January 2024. Ahsan would later tell a jury that he left because he feared his life was in danger.

Indeed, the police served him and his family with threat to safety notices. In the meantime, two of his friends faced the music in his absence for moving the BMW. In 2016, Kadell Rivers, then 21, was jailed for three-and-a-half years after pleading guilty to assisting an offender. Shahid was found guilty of the same charge and jailed for four years.

Years passed until January 16, 2024, when it was revealed that Ahsan had been tracked down in Pakistan and extradited back to the UK, following collaboration between the authorities in both countries. More details about that period have emerged recently.

Following the killing, GMP, together with other UK law enforcement bodies, contacted Pakistani authorities to request that Ahsan be sent back on a plane. Without an official extradition treaty between the two countries, it was the next best thing.

Officials in Pakistan were receptive and Ahsan was apprehended in 2017. But it rumbled on and on as he fought the process, knowing what awaited him back in the UK. It was only on that Tuesday morning in January earlier this year, when he touched down on British soil again at Heathrow Airport, that Ahsan must have finally realised the game was up.

Ten months later, when presented with overwhelming evidence, a jury of 12 men and women took about two hours to find him guilty. Following a three week long trial, the brevity of their deliberations was a clear reflection of the strength of the prosecution case.

Bespectacled and wearing a navy suit in the dock, surrounded by reinforced glass, Ahsan may well have been wondering how it had come to this. Much had changed over the past decade. He still has many more decades to consider how he went from a criminal unknown, to a gangland assassin and convicted murderer.