Calculated killer described himself as the chosen one’

As the shotgun blasts rang out, the floor inside the Luton block of council flats where Juliana Falcon lived with her teenage children was shaking.

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

A neighbour living on the floor below had already been upstairs to knock on the front door after hearing the sounds of a struggle at around 5am on Friday 13 September last year. Mariam Abbas could just about make out groaning and punching sounds coming from inside the home as she knocked again, but ran away in terror and called the police after hearing the distinctive sound of gunfire.

Little did she know that her 999 call, which led to the discovery of Juliana Falcon’s body along with those of her two youngest children, would disrupt the plans of a teenage gunman who was determined to become one of the worst mass killers in history. Nicholas Prosper, 18, had intended to shoot his family as they slept and lie in wait in their eighth-floor flat before opening fire on 30 four and five-year-old children during assembly at a nearby primary school.

But the violent struggle with his family had alerted the neighbours and soon police were swarming the area. Ms Falcon, 48, had been shot in the head along with her daughter Giselle Prosper, 13, and son Kyle Prosper, 16, who also suffered more than 100 stab wounds. Prosper eventually gave up, flagged down a police car and was arrested. A loaded 12-bore Japanese Nikko shotgun he had bought with a forged licence was found hidden in bushes nearby, along with more than 30 cartridges intended for his meticulously planned attack.

If he had succeeded, he would have carried out the first major school shooting in Britain since the 1996 massacre in Dunblane, Scotland, in which Thomas Hamilton murdered 16 children and a teacher before turning the gun on himself. To horrified locals, there was nothing to suggest the quiet and reclusive teenager, who spent most of his time in his bedroom, was plotting an atrocity.