Young Cheshire Police constable Mark Toker was not best pleased about being asked to work overtime at the end of a long shift on February 25, 1993.
Police staffing numbers in Warrington, where the 25-year-old was on duty, were reduced that night due to several local officers attending a function. Reluctantly, the married dad-of-one agreed to stay on after his shift ended at 10pm.
That twist of fate would write his name into the history of one of the most astonishing terrorist incidents to hit north west England.
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Around midnight heading into February 26, PC Toker was patrolling the town centre when he stopped a suspicious white Mazda van at the junction of Garven Place and Sankey Street sat idling at a green light. PC Toker stepped out of his patrol car and approached the driver, a young, moustached Irishman "smelling of stale tobacco", who gave the false name Mark Davies and gave a Nottingham address. PC Toker had no idea he was dealing with IRA terrorist Denis Kinsella.
Kinsella was breathalysed but was not intoxicated. However neither he nor his passenger could produce any documents, so PC Toker issued a HORT/1 form ordering Kinsella to present his licence at a police station within seven days.
As he was filling in the paperwork, PC Toker noticed a third figure lying flat in the shadows at the back of the van. Feeling uneasy, PC Toker radioed for back up as he walked around to the rear doors.
It was at that moment his life changed. Those rear doors burst open and he was faced with terrorist cell leader Pairic MacFhloinn, 40, pointing a handgun squarely at his head. Instinctively, PC Toker swivelled round and managed to dodge the initial shots as he desperately ran for cover, but three bullets found their mark, wounding him in the back and leg.
Bleeding heavily, PC Toker stayed on his police radio to call for help and gave details of the vehicle, which would later earn him the Queen's Police Medal, according to Cheshire's Museum of Policing.
Thankfully an off-duty nurse was nearby and able to stem the bleeding until paramedics David Chadwick and Nigel Jenkinson rushed to the scene. Back in 1993, Mr Chadwick told the ECHO: "He was conscious and very distressed. He kept saying that all he wanted was to be with his wife and son. He did not know the extent of his injuries. He was in a lot of pain but we were able to talk to him throughout and tell him what was going on."
PC Toker survived and was, according to his colleagues at the time, desperate to get back to work even as he was lying in hospital recovering. He later became a detective working in CID in Warrington and Manchester.
In the immediate aftermath, an enormous manhunt was launched to find the gunmen. They managed to stay off the radar for around 50 minutes, driving towards Lymm where they ditched the van. At around 1am, 18-year-old Lee Wright, driving a Ford Escort in the Lymm area, was flagged down by three men.
The unwitting Mr Wright pulled to a stop only to find a gun pressed to his head. He was bundled into the boot of his own car and the terrorists set off onto the M62 motorway towards Manchester.
That car, however, was spotted by officers from Greater Manchester Police (GMP) who saw it driving at speed. When the vehicle failed to stop and raced back towards Warrington, scenes reminiscent of an Hollywood blockbuster ensued.
Two GMP patrol cars were hit by gunfire when one of the carjackers leaned out of a window as the vehicles were flying across the M62 at high speed. The then Assistant Chief Constable of Cheshire Police, Brian Baister, once said: "It was like the Gunfight at the OK Corral. They were firing at each other as they drove along."
The Escort eventually stopped on the hard shoulder as the terrorists believed it had ran out of petrol because Mr Wright, thrashing around in the boot, had damaged a wire to the petrol gauge.
As they tried to flee the vehicle near Croft, Kinsella and MacFhloinn were arrested. Remarkably the third terrorist, Michael Timmins, managed to escape and was never apprehended.
As the men were being questioned throughout the early hours, the terrifying purpose of their mission and the reason they were willing to resort to extreme violence to escape became clear.
According to ECHO reports from the time, the IRA unit had planted four bombs at a gasworks site on Winwick Road in Warrington. The residents in the estates closely surrounding the facility were awoken by a series of explosions at around 4.10am, including one that destroyed a gasometer sending a fireball around 1,000 feet into the air.
However, in a stroke of luck that averted a major catastrophe, one bomb on a petrol tank failed to go off and one of the others, mounted underneath a series of torpedo shaped tanks 50 yards away from a housing estate, did not ignite the five million cubic feet of gas within.
Cheshire County Fire Officer Dennis David told the ECHO in 1993: "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if the bomb on the cylinders had gone off we could have been facing a most dreadful situation. But luckily, the device only damaged the mountings."
In 1994, MacFhloinn was sentenced to 35 years in prison and Kinsella to 25 years for their part in the bombing and the attempted murder of PC Toker. Kinsella's uncle, John Kinsella, was also jailed after being convicted of storing semtex explosives for the unit. However, he was later released under the terms of the Good Friday agreement.
As Warrington reeled over the destruction brought to their streets, many must have also felt tremendous relief that no loss of life was recorded that day despite the best efforts of the IRA. The town would not be so lucky three weeks later.
The murder of 12-year-old Tim Parry and three-year-old Johnathan Ball on Bridge Street in the town centre would prove to be one of the catalysts of the movement that eventually led to the Good Friday Agreement.
Had those bombs in the gasworks ignited as the bungling terrorist cell intended, those unspeakable tragedies would likely have been two of many more.
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