An American woman who flew into Manchester Airport, tried to shoot a man dead outside his Birmingham home before fleeing the country and spending five years on the run was today jailed for three decades.
Aimee Betro tried to shoot her target from just feet away outside his home in a cul-de-sac in South Yardley, but her gun jammed.
CCTV footage showed how the victim had just returned home and was getting out of his car, but sped away as she approached him with the gun, smashing the open door from Betro’s car.
But a few hours later, she returned and fired three bullets through bedroom windows of the family home.
She had flown into Manchester Airport on 22 August, 2019, just over two weeks before the shooting.
Two men, Derbyshire father and son Mohammed Aslam and Mohammed Nazir, were jailed for their role in the murder plot last year.
They had been involved in a feud with the father of the man who Betro tried to shoot, who also lived at the house which she shot at.
He was owner of a clothes shop in Birmingham where, in 2018, a disorder resulted in damage to the premises, and injuries to himself, Aslam and Nazir.
Betro fled the country the day after she’d fired the shots at the house, and a major operation with international law enforcement agencies to track her down began.
She was finally tracked down to Armenia, more than 2,000 miles away from Birmingham, last summer.
In January, she was returned to the UK by specialist National Extradition Unit officers from the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) Joint International Crime Centre.
After a trial lasting two weeks, Betro, aged 45, was found guilty of conspiracy to murder, possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, and an offence relating to the importation of ammunition into the UK.
Today at Birmingham Crown Court, Betro was jailed for 30 years.
