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A man who turned his car into a weapon as he launched a series of hate-filled homophobic and racist attacks on Christmas Day last year in central London has been convicted of murder.
Anthony Gilheaney, 31, was drunk when he mounted the pavement with his Mercedes and repeatedly targeted people to run over.
He was convicted of the murder of Aiden Chapman, 25, who sustained catastrophic brain injuries after being struck by Gilheaney’s car.
A couple on their way home from midnight mass were also attacked in the early hours of Christmas Day 2024 in London’s West End.
The jury was told of desperate scenes, terror and heroism as one man shielded his partner from being struck by the car with his own body.
Four other people were seriously injured, with the rampage ending only when Gilheaney, who drove at more than 100mph to elude police, crashed his car.
He was found guilty of murder, attempted murder and wounding with intent on Friday, following a trial at the Old Bailey.
He tried to murder Marcelo Basbus-Garcia, reversing into him at high speed, and also tried to kill his partner, Miguel Waihrich, as he tended to Basbus-Garcia. Waihrich told jurors he made eye contact with Gilheaney as he drove at them a second time, while Basbus-Garcia was unconscious and “covered in blood”.
Waihrich said: “I remember his eyes and the position of his hands on the wheel, I remember his face and me crying for him to stop, and he didn’t stop.”
The couple had been to midnight mass in Piccadilly and were on Great Windmill Street when they saw Gilheaney shouting, naked from the waist up, in the middle of the road. Gilheaney got in his car and drove off, then returned and headed towards the couple.
Waihrich told the court: “It was very high speed, the way he reversed. It was so fast every person in that street was in panic – we started to run.”
People ran for their lives as Basbus-Garcia was knocked to the ground. He told the Old Bailey: “The car came after me – but it would be fair to say that he [Gilheaney] was after everybody in that street. The last thing I remember was being hit by the car. The last thing I remember, actually, is being terrified.”
Waihrich ran over to his partner, who was bleeding and unconscious, and saw the car returning. He told the court: “He [Gilheaney] stopped and looked at me. He is coming in my direction, I try to make signs, gesture and say: ‘Stop it, please.’ The car doesn’t stop and accelerated towards us, and I decided to protect Marcelo’s head with my body as a shield. I’m just counting the seconds before the final attack.”
The prosecutor, Crispin Aylett KC, said the attack on Waihrich and Basbus-Garcia was “clearly a homophobic attack”. Afterwards, Gilheaney ploughed into Chapman and his friend Tyrone Itorho as they crossed Shaftesbury Avenue.
Chapman died in hospital on New Year’s Eve, having been thrown into the air after being struck by the car. Doctors described the brain injuries he suffered as “unsurvivable”.
Minutes before, Gilheaney, who had been drinking heavily, shouted racial abuse at an Asian man before driving into him, then getting out of his car and attacking him.
He also crashed into a taxi, then mounted the pavement where a family pushing a child in a pushchair had to run to get out of the way. Three people escaped by pinning themselves against a wall.
A witness described Gilheaney as “ping-ponging from side to side along the street” in between using his car as a weapon.
His blood alcohol when tested several hours later was more than one and a half times the legal limit and he is estimated to have hit people at more than 30mph. He had been drinking in Bar Rumba, leaving at about 12.40am on Christmas morning. A witness said Gilheaney was “very angry, his whole body was tensed and primed”.
His Mercedes had alcohol bottles, including vodka, strewn on the floor as well as mixer cans.
Between March 2012 and 2023 Gilheaney accumulated six convictions for dangerous driving and had been disqualified twice, including at the time of the attacks.
Gilheaney, from Harlow, Essex, had denied murder. He faces a mandatory life sentence and the judge will decide the minimum term he must serve before release can be considered.
