Warring alleged gang bosses appear to have settled their long-running feud with a fist-fight in Dubai, the Manchester Evening News. has learned. Michael 'Cazza' Carroll and Stephen Britton - named in gangland trials as the leaders of rival Salford outfits - took part in a 'straightener' witnessed by their supporters, according to gangland sources.
Detectives at Greater Manchester Police are also understood to have logged intelligence about the scrap, alleged to have been 'won' by Cazza until at least one of those watching the encounter is said to have stepped in and joined the fray. Only time will tell if the fist-fight will bring an end to tensions between two notorious Salford-based gangs.
Stephen Britton, named as leader of the A Team in successive trials, and Michael 'Cazza' Carroll, named as the boss of the splinter group known as the Anti A Team, are said to have been at war since before the 2015 murder of Britton's mentor, Salford 'Mr Big' Paul Massey. Massey was gunned down by a masked assassin wearing army fatigues Mark 'The Iceman' Fellows, outside his suburban home in Clifton, Salford, in July 2015.
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The shooting was the low point of a feud characterised by extreme violence, featuring a series of shootings and stabbings. During the subsequent murder trial at Liverpool Crown Court, jurors were told that Massey's death was the result of a feud between two gangs, one led by Carroll, the other by Britton.
"The first gang was headed by a man named Michael Carroll," said prosecutor Paul Greaney QC. "The defendant Mark Fellows was associated with that gang and Steven Boyle, in turn, was an established friend and associate of Mark Fellows.
"The second gang, which called itself 'the A Team', was headed by a man named Stephen Britton. Paul Massey was associated with that gang and was apparently regarded by Stephen Britton as a mentor."
In 2019, Britton was said to have held peace talks with one key member of the Anti A Team. Now gangland sources have told the M.E.N. he was involved in a 'straightener' with Carroll in Dubai, although the source added that it was possible the encounter was more to do with personal animosity between the pair than any attempt to draw a line under the feud between the two gangs.
"They just don't like each other," said the source. Other sources have said it wasn't the first encounter the pair have had in Dubai, and that actually Britton 'won' the last one.
It is alleged Carroll had 'won' the fight until an associate of Britton joined the fray. Another source said that actually Britton was the victor. The M.E.N. understands the team of detectives which has investigated the feud and brought a number of successful prosecutions is aware of the alleged encounter in Dubai, which has been logged as intelligence on their records.
Following Massey’s murder, Michael Carroll fled to Spain and graffiti appeared all over Salford calling ‘Cazza’ a ‘grass rat snitch police informer’ and urging him to ‘come fight your war’. A hit-squad was dispatched to Spain.
But any assassination attempt was thwarted following a raid on an apartment in Marbella on February 16, 2016, when Policia Nacional officers, alongside detectives from GMP, found an astonishing haul of weapons including knives and a loaded pistol.
The man said to be the leader of the A Team, Stephen Britton, who regarded Massey as his mentor and with whom he had spent the afternoon before his assassination, was arrested alongside others but released. It is believed Carroll then fled to Thailand and later Dubai.
Carroll, 42, is known to have worked as a scaffolder, and grew up in Salford. He moved to the Wigan area following the alleged fall-out with members of the A Team, before moving abroad.
He wasn’t in the dock for any of the three trials connected to the gang warfare of 2015 - but his name was mentioned so frequently he may as well have been. All three juries were told that he was the leader of a rival gang called the Anti A Team. The Iceman, Mark Fellows, was said to be one of Cazza’s trusted foot-soldiers.
The tit-for-tat feud between the rival gangs appeared to escalate to extreme violence following one particularly upsetting incident for Carroll, when his ex-girlfriend - and the mother of his child - watched in horror as masked men removed the roof of her VW Golf with a Stihl saw outside their home in January 2015.
The bloodshed that followed formed the basis of a succession of gangland trials, the first concluding in January 2019 when Fellows was handed a whole-life term for the murder of Massey and the assassination of Massey’s friend, Merseyside gang enforcer John Kinsella, three years later.
A second trial followed and concluded with the jailing of eight members of the A Team in April 2019 for offences in connection with a shooting at a car wash in Ashton-in-Makerfield in March 2015, and then the shooting of a seven-year-old boy, Christian Hickey, and his mother Jayne, 30, on the doorstep of their home in Eccles in October of that year. Mother and son survived although they were seriously injured.
That trial heard that 'Cazza' was a close friend of little Christian’s dad. Stephen Britton was jailed for five years for killing a teenager in a hit-and-run in 2009. Britton, then 21, was fleeing police in his red Golf GTi when he struck 18-year-old Adam Jama and carried him 50 yards down a road in Ordsall, Salford.
But he did not stop to get out and see if Adam was alright, even though he knew him, driving away from the scene. Britton handed himself in to police a few days later and admitted it, saying: "I did it... I am sorry to him and all his family. I'll go to jail for what I've done."
He was jailed for five years and four months after admitting causing death by dangerous driving.
Although he has been named as the leader of the A Team gang in three trials, he has not been charged with any of the offences considered by any of the juries.
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