Chilling moment guman acts out school shooting before mum thwarts his plan

A mass killing-obsessed 19-year-old posed with ‘wooden gun’ before shooting his mum and two siblings dead and setting off to ‘kill as many as possible’ at an early year’s school assembly.

Juliana Falcon, 48, Giselle Prosper, 13, and Kyle Prosper, 16, were found dead in their Leabank flat in Luton on September 13 last year.

Their family described them as a ‘strong, loving mother’, a ‘beautiful soul and caring young girl’, and ‘a kind and funny young man’.

Nicholas Prosper, now 19, barely reacted as the details of his crimes were revealed in court at his sentencing hearing today.

Prosper had killed each of them with a shotgun wound to the head around 5am that day after an ‘extended, violent struggle’.

But the injuries inflicted on his brother Kyle were ‘particularlydistressing’, as he was suffered more than 100 stab wounds.

‘The nature of Kyle’s injuries is particularly distressing’, prosecutor Timothy Cray KC told Luton Crown Court at Prosper’s sentencing hearing today.

Giselle was found under the dining table, where she had tried to hide before Prosper shot her in the face.

Juliana was found in the hallway with defensive injuries and gunshot wound to the top of her head. ‘This was killing for the sake of killing’, Cray said.

Such ‘brutal’ murders shocked the local community, which was alarmed to discover he intended this as the ‘first step in an even more shocking mass killing’.

Prosper’s internet history revealed an interest in mass shootings – including at Columbine High school, where two boys massacred 13 people with shotguns in 1999.

For months, Prosper had plotted to kill at least 30 children and two teachers in his own mass shooting at an early years’ assembly in his former primary school, roughly a kilometre from his home.

It would be ‘one of the biggest events ever’, the teenager wrote on a note with a diagram of the school, labelled ‘kill all’. He even bought a distinctive pair of black and yellow shows as an outfit for his attacks.

‘The defendant’s main wish was to achieve lasting notoriety as a mass killer’, Cray said.

‘He understood his plans, if realised, would bring about the greatest number of deaths in a school or other mass shooting in the United Kingdom and possibly even in the United States of America.’

But he flagged down two police officers on Bramingham Road while on his way to the school, two hours after murdering his family.

He had been hiding while sirens filled the air after neighbours – alerted by the sound of ‘banging, ruffling and groaning’, followed by gunshots – had called police.

Prosper then led officers to where he had hidden the shotgun and a bag of 33 cartridges.

The teenager had acquired the weapon by feigning an interest in clay pigeon shooting and making a ‘high-quality forgery’ of a shotgun licence to deceive a private seller he had found online.

It was all part of at least a year of planning a mass killing. Video footage from almost exactly a year before appeared to show Prosper practicing shooting at a piece of wood.

He researched mass killers in the US, Norway, Australia and New Zealand. He viewed images of notorious murdered.

He then bought a gun – paying £650 for the weapon and cartridges, plus £30 gas money – to a seller in the carpark of Leabank the day before the murders.

In the hours leading up to the attack on has family, Prosper had spent four hours on his phone searching terms including ‘shotgun injuries to the neck’, ‘What will happen on 13th September’, ‘Do you die if shot in the neck’, ‘Does sex with a corpse feel good’, ‘Man shoots woman in the head at close range’, ‘Woman raped and killed’, ‘How lethal are neck gunshots’.

A quiet, introverted boy at school, Prosper had developed a ‘deep alienation from normal life and interest in the darkest sides of humanity’ in the year leading up to the murders, the prosecutor said.

Psychiatrists who assessed him concluded the teenager had undiagnosed autism -but he also showed an ‘extreme lack of empathy’ that this could not explain.

‘While he had read documents or manifestos produced by other mass killers, his plans did not arise from any particular political or ideological cause’, Cray said.

‘The evidence suggests that what drove him on most was the desire to be famous or infamous as a mass killer. This was killing for the sake of killing.’

Prosper pleaded guilty to murder at a hearing last month, along with charges of purchasing a shotgun without a certificate, possession of a shotgun with intent to endanger life and possession of a kitchen knife in a public place.

In a statement released in September, the family of Juliana, Giselle and Kyle said: ‘Julie was a strong, loving mother to her four beautiful children, who were her absolute world.

‘In her spare time, she was a keen athlete and enjoyed raising money for charity – she was always putting others first.

‘Kyle was a kind and funny young man who loved football and boxing. He was creative and thriving on TikTok, a big talent with massive potential. Kyle’s friends were his everything.

‘Giselle was a beautiful soul and caring young girl; she liked to laugh lots and loved her family and big brothers.

‘She was so loveable with an infectious smile. She was also an exceptional pupil at school and was loved dearly by her friends in Year 9.’

Detective Chief Inspector Sam Khanna, from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit, said: ‘In all my years working on murder investigations, I have never known a case quite like this.

‘Not only were three innocent lives taken in such brutal circumstances, but we then learnt of Prosper’s plans to carry out a shooting at a school, something which left our whole investigation team in shock and disbelief.

‘We cannot ever begin to comprehend why someone would plan to kill innocent children and are so grateful to those arresting officers who helped prevent this from taking place.’

Councillor Hazel Simmons, leader of Luton Council, said: ‘The revelation that the perpetrator had plans to cause further harm in one of our schools is extremely shocking, distressing and upsetting; and we don’t underestimate the emotional difficulty this news will have on children, staff, parents and carers across our school community.

‘Our schools have robust systems in place to keep children safe and security is constantly reviewed and monitored.’

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