Paul Francis Cash

Paul Francis Cash was shot at a travellers site in Cobham.

Three men were tried for his murder but acquitted.

A 20-year-old man admitted firing the fatal shot that killed Paul Cash, but said that he had only fired once in the air and once into the ground and had been acting in self-defence as Paul Cash had fired a shotgun at him.

Paul Cash had been shot in the chest.

The 20-year-old man was said to have pulled out a cowboy gun during a row at the site and started shooting about. Paul Cash's son said that he saw the 20-year-old man take the gun out of his jacket as he argued with his uncle. He said, 'Then he pulled a gun from his pocket. It was black, like a cowboy gun. He was shooting it anywhere he wanted. Everyone was running trying to get behind a fence. I think it was the fourth shot that hit my father. I saw him lying behind the fence. I think he was dead straight away. There was a hole and blood was running out. I was screaming. There are so many memories'.

The row had happened at an illegal-halting in Chobham in Surrey after Paul Cash and his family arrived to look at horses after a trotting race.

However, the 20-year-old man and his companions claimed that Paul Cash and his family had come looking for trouble following a row with Paul Cash's sister who lived at the site.

It was also claimed that Paul Cash had attempted to shoot a member of the other group, the man married to his sister, twenty years earlier and that at the time he was shot he had been leaning over a fence firing a shotgun.

The 20-year-old man tried said that he had fired his gun into the air and into the ground when Paul Cash fired the shotgun in his direction. He said, 'I just wanted to frighten them off. I thought they were going to kill me'.

It was noted that one of Paul Cash's brothers, Jimmy Cash, was stabbed to death three months earlier and that after Paul Cash's death that another brother died on 29 April 2006 following a booze binge as he grieved for the deaths of his two brothers.