Ryan, Michael Robert (1960-1987)

British murderer who killed 16 people and injured more than a dozen in Hungerford, England, in August 1987, before shooting himself.

Ryan was a landscape worker and a gun enthusiast, who had held gun licences since 1978 and boasted that he always carried a pistol. He murdered a woman and her young family in a local beauty spot, before driving to Hungerford and slaughtering his mother, neighbours, police, and passers-by. Eventually he was cornered in a primary school, where he shot himself. His motives were never understood.