Consett & Stanley - Day death touched us all

The council planning officer and the eccentric former steelworker stood talking over the gate at the entrance to Dryden's smallholding in Eliza Lane, Butsfield, as a TV crew and reporters looked on.

There was a brief look of resignation on the face of the mild-mannered, environmentally-concerned official who had decided to supervise personally the demolition of Dryden's hole-in-the-ground bungalow.

Minutes later he lay dead in a ditch.

Dryden later told the jury at his murder trial that he considered the divorced father-of-two to be a 'gentleman' and 'first class' and that they had been friendly in the early days of the long-running planning wrangle.

But he also claimed that the planner 'had it in' for him as the saga developed and the council's attitude to his development hardened.

No-one will ever know what was going through Mr Collinson's mind as preparations were made for the contractor's digger to break through the high wooden fence and raze the bungalow.

Like the journalists who had followed the dispute for 18 months or so, he probably regarded Dryden's death threats - the most outlandish being that Dryden would pack one of his American cars with explosives and drive it into the council offices - as empty words.

But Dryden had offered violence before, assaulting the council's enforcement officer (who later resigned) when he and Mr Collinson tried to serve a summons on him.

And on another occasion a friend of Dryden's burst into an internal meeting at the council's headquarters and threw a live cockerel at the planner.

Mr Collinson and his colleagues knew there was a potential for trouble and, against police advice, announced the demolition date and invited the media to attend.

The journalists were part of the council's safety policy. Officials, worried about what Dryden would do if he arrived at the plot one morning to find his bungalow reduced to rubble, thought his reaction could be contained if the demolition was done publicly.

After all, who commits murder when they are being filmed by a camera crew from the local TV station and there are police and onlookers surrounding him?

That's certainly what I told myself when I arrived at that strange smallholding, with the odd-looking bungalow partially obscured from the road by a grassy bank, on that bright summer's morning ten years ago.

I was in two minds whether or not to be on Dryden's land or to stay outside. I'd heard stories of his rocket-flying younger days and heard him talk of laying mines on his land but I had no idea he possessed the arsenal of weapons that police later found.

Dryden allowed me on to the site but advised me to run when he gave the order that he was 'clearing the land.' He didn't explain what he meant.

We chatted for a while and gradually more people, friends and supporters, arrived, including a woman and her young daughter.

It was the first time I laid eyes on Mike Peckett whose first assignment as a full-time photographer with The Northern Echo was to produce the incredible frame-by-frame pictures of the tragedy.

Dryden seemed confident and he told me that the council would be acting illegally if it destroyed the building as he had been informed by the Department of Environment's planning inspectorate that he could appeal against the council's decision.

I knew that he had already lost a planning appeal conducted by a Government inspector the previous year, that there was no way of overturning the decision, that the process was exhausted.

But Dryden had contacted the inspectorate who thought he had made a new planning application - in fact he hadn't - and posted a standard letter saying he should assume his appeal was valid unless he was told otherwise.

It was to have awful consequences because Dryden seized on the letter as 'proof' the council was overstepping the mark - and he was to go to murderous lengths to protect his ramshackle paradise.

Unknown to Dryden, Mr Collinson, who himself had contacted the inspectorate, had composed a letter telling him there were no grounds for an appeal. It was typed but never sent.

And a second letter from the inspectorate, also telling Dryden he had no valid appeal, didn't arrive until after the tragedy.

When Dryden made his threat at the gate, after Mr Collinson said there was no reason to postpone the demolition, some of us had an uneasy feeling about what was about to happen.

A crowd gathered at the point that the digger was going to enter the land and Dryden's friend John Graham - who later committed suicide - argued with Mr Collinson through the fence as the BBC Look North crew filmed the exchange.

I and Evening Chronicle reporter Garry Willey had covered the planning dispute from its early days and Mr Willey had alerted police in Consett after Dryden showed him a 'full metal jacket' bullet and threatened to machine gun the demolition team.

Instead of going down to the fence we stood several yards away on the mound formed by the earth scooped out for the bungalow.

Dryden disappeared for a few minutes and when he emerged from a caravan in the corner of the site he had a large gun in a holster.

Striding over like a cowboy heading for a shoot-out - he was an avid Western fan he ignored my shouted question about what he was going to do.

He walked to the fence, drew the revolver and pointed it at Mr Collinson for what seemed like minutes but was probably a matter of seconds.

It was only later, watching video footage, that I heard the planner calmly ask the BBC cameraman to 'get a shot of the gun.' No-one ran, no-one panicked.

From where we were, the shot didn't sound like much and at first I thought it was a blank. I heard a groan and saw something move. I couldn't make out what it was, but it was probably Mr Collinson collapsing, fatally wounded.

I can't remember how many other shots I heard as I joined the rush to get away, running across the site and a neighbouring field to reach the A68.

Dryden meanwhile fired two more bullets into Mr Collinson and started shooting up the lane.

His intended target, council solicitor Michael Dunstan, escaped unhurt, but he did wound BBC reporter Tony Belmont and one of the police officers at the scene, PC Stephen Campbell.

As we tried to regain our breath at the end of the lane, the enormity of what had happened only slowly became apparent.

Word spread that Mr Collinson had not survived but, despite seeing him shot, I still thought he might be alive.

Shock is a physical condition and it affects people in different ways. Some cried, some tried to raise a smile with a joke while others stayed silent.

I saw it etched on the face of Derwentside Council chairman Keith Murray-Hetherington when he arrived at the scene a short time later.

It was a long, long day for everyone involved. For many there, returning home to loved ones that night was a particularly emotional experience - a mixture of shock, gratitude for having escaped death or injury, sadness for Mr Collinson and his family and hope that the wounded men would recover.

It was also a time to reflect on how uncertain and fragile life is, how the end can come at any moment in any place, regardless of your plans for the future.

As the shock subsided days later you began to wonder what would drive a man to kill another in cold blood so publicly