North Yorkshire Police officers are paying their respects today to PC David Haigh, who was shot on duty 40 years ago by multiple murderer Barry Prudom.
PC Haigh, 29, was sent to arrest a petty criminal sleeping rough in woodland near Beckwithshaw on the morning of June 17, 1982,
Instead he found Barry Prudom, asleep in his car, and was murdered by a fatal shot on the side of the road.
An error in the police system meant PC Haigh wasn’t aware the petty criminal had been arrested the night before, retired PC Mike Clipston told the Yorkshire Post when he recalled the incident a decade ago:
“The person he had a warrant for, I had taken into the police station the night before. If he had known, David would never have gone.”
PC Haigh is now buried at Stonefall Cemetery.
David Haigh was the the first victim of Prudom, who over 17 days killed a further two people, including another officer Sergeant David Winter. He also attempted to kill dog handler PC Ken Oliver.
The search for Prudom became the biggest manhunt the country had seen at the time.
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Barry Prudom, ‘The Phantom in the Forest’
In the summer of 1982, Prudom avoided trial at Leeds Crown Court for violent assault with an iron bar and went on the run. He was found by PC David Haigh sleeping rough in a car near Norwood Edge, Beckwithshaw. He murdered the officer and drove off in a green Citroen.
After abandoning the car, he hitchhiked to Lincolnshire and broke into the home of Freda Jackson on June 20 and stole £4.50. By June 23 he’d made it to Nottinghamshire and shot both George Luckett, 52, and his wife Sylvia, 50, in the head after tying them up. Remarkably Sylvia survived and crawled to her neighbour’s house to raise the alarm.
By this point, Lincolnshire Police, Nottinghamshire Police and North Yorkshire Police had shared information and realised they were all after the same man.
Prudom was stopped on a routine check by dog handler PC Ken Oliver near Dalby Forest, eight miles from Scarborough. He shot PC Oliver in the face and the dog reacted giving the officer time to run for shelter. PC Oliver was hit seven times but none were fatal, the dog was also shot twice and survived.
Within hours a huge manhunt had commenced in the forest involving police marksmen, helicopters and 1,000 police officers on foot.
Prudom’s name was released to the media as the police’s prime suspect and a report came in of a suspicious man seen in Old Malton, North Yorkshire. Police Sergeant David Winter, 31, and PC Mick Wood went to the scene.
Sgt Winter was shot three times and died from his injuries, Prudom managed to escape capture once again.
Police put a cordon around the village of Malton believing Prudom was nearby, they told the media they were focused on Dalby Forest in the hope Prudom would believe it and resurface in the town.
He was found in a shelter he made using his survival training, near Malton’s Tennis Club just 300 yards from the police station that became the temporary headquarters co-ordinating the manhunt.
Police opened fire on the shelter but a port mortem revealed Prudom died from a self-inflicted shot to the head.
