This is the extraordinary moment a gunman fired into the front door of a family home on a residential street before a terrified mother called 999 for help.
The masked man was filmed walking onto the driveway of the property in Luton, Bedfordshire, before pulling out a double-barrelled shotgun from his backpack.
Footage captured on a Ring doorbell at night showed the porch light coming on as the gunman stood outside before firing at the front door then running away.
The clip formed part of evidence for a major drugs bust which features in a new episode of 24 Hours In Police Custody airing on Channel 4 at 9pm this evening.
A woman inside the home calls 999, telling the call handler: ‘Yeah, somebody is shooting on my door, shot, they’re shooting… seven people in the house, children.’
She adds that the ‘somebody’s outside, somebody shot the door’ before telling others inside the house: ‘Don’t go anybody, don’t go near the door, come back.’
The distressed woman is also asked by the call handler: ‘Do you know who could have done it, have you seen anybody?’ But she replies: ‘I have no idea, no idea.’
The handler says: ‘We’re on the way, alright, just stay on the line with me.’ The woman then replies: ‘Please, I have children in the house.’ And the handler says: ‘Yep, we’re going to get there. Right, calm down, we’ll get there as soon as we can.’
The man is filmed walking up to the door of a home in Luton, Bedfordshire, with a backpack
The man takes a double-barrelled shotgun out of his backpack before firing it at the front door
The shooter later fled Britain but police saw encrypted messages from a local drug supplier known as ‘Frontrunner’ which led them to suspect he supplied the weapon.
A message he sent on Encrochat said: ‘Gave mine to a mate the other day, mine’s a shotty.’ Officers believe the man is 28-year-old Ethan Mitchell and try to find him.
The documentary shows Mitchell taking police on a high-speed chase, mounting a kerb and eventually being caught after a detective spots him walking down the street.
He is arrested and a search of his van and property finds cocaine, ecstasy and about £40,000 of cash in a safe.
Mitchell was later found not guilty of conspiracy to to supply a firearm, after his defence argued that messages he sent about the shotgun attack were not intended to be taken seriously.
However he was jailed for five years in February 2021 for possession with intent to supply MDMA, cocaine and possession of criminal property.
Then in June 2023, Mitchell was jailed for a further four years after pleading guilty to conspiracy to supply cocaine, heroin, cannabis, ketamine and MDMA.
The documentary also looks at how police smashed a major Luton drugs ring operating on EncroChat, an encrypted chat network.
The episode shows Polish cocaine importer Blazej Holub being arrested at Luton Airport when he got off a flight from Warsaw after police worked out his identity from EncroChat messages about a drugs shipment.
The 43-year-old Polish national who lived in Luton was known as ‘Krissy’ within the drugs ring, which had sold hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of cocaine.
Damage to the front door is pictured following the shot being fired by the masked gunman
Holub was later jailed for more than 16 years after admitting conspiracy to supply Class A drugs and conspiracy to avoid prohibition on the importation of cocaine.
Detectives identified Holub as well as Kamran Bashir, Ibraz Iqbal and Krysztof Kozon by their usernames from Encrochat between January and June 2020.
Bashir was jailed at Luton Crown Court in July 2021 for a total of more than 16 years, Iqbal for more than 12 years and Kozon for 11 years.
It came months after law enforcement agencies across Europe hacked EncroChat – a communication system used by organised criminals trading in drugs and guns – in one of the biggest operations of its kind.
Thousands of officers from the National Crime Agency, regional crime squads and every police force in the UK were involved in the massive international sting in 2020.
After four years of work by international teams, French investigators managed to access Encrochat, a platform used by 60,000 people worldwide, including around 10,000 in the UK, for what law enforcement agencies claim were purely criminal purposes.
The company, which charged £1,500 for a device on a six-month contract, sent out a warning to users in June that year to say that its servers had been hacked by a government entity.
This left investigators with a race against time to make the most of the wealth of information available on the platform, targeting ‘Mr and Mrs Bigs’ before they could cover their tracks.
Ethan Mitchell as later cleared over supplying the weapon but jailed for drugs offences in 2021
Bedfordshire Police Detective Chief Superintendent Duncan Young said: ‘Our long‑standing partnership of over a decade with 24 Hours in Police Custody gives the public a transparent view of the realities of modern policing.
‘It shows the skill, determination and compassion our officers bring to every single case, and I’m proud of the professionalism on display throughout this episode.
‘The harm caused by drugs is the common thread running through so much of the criminality we deal with. Drugs fuel violence, exploitation and fear in our communities, and remains one of our highest priorities.
‘By exposing how these organised networks operate – and demonstrating the tireless work that goes into dismantling them – we hope the public will have a stronger understanding of both the scale of the threat and of our commitment to tackling it.’
The episode captures the early stages of Operation Costello against serious and organised crime which has achieved 279 arrests, 544 years in sentencing, 49 weapons seized and 10 firearms recovered since 2020.
Bedfordshire Police said drugs seized as part of the operation include 288kg of cannabis, 7,551 cannabis plants, 26kg of cocaine and 2.6kg of heroin.
’24 Hours in Police Custody: The Secret Network’ is available to watch and stream on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm
