How MI5 foiled a Tesco worker's plan for mass gun attack

At the Old Bailey, after a retrial following an earlier hung jury, Coleman was found guilty of preparing to carry out an attack; he had admitted possessing a firearm, ammunition and 10 offences of having documents useful to terrorism.

During a search of his cell at HMP Bullingham while awaiting trial, prison staff found a note referencing 'The 14 Words'.

Shocked shoppers watched armed police arrest him in Stratford; officers later conducted searches at his family home in Tailors Close, Great Notley, finding knives, a rock with a swastika, equipment for detecting hidden cameras/listening devices, and far-right posters.

Following undercover MI5 instructions, Coleman walked to a Land Rover in a Morrisons car park and swapped a bag of cash for a firearm and 188 rounds of 9mm ammunition; he then boarded a train to Stratford, east London.

Two days before he was due to pick up the weapon, Coleman wrote: 'Something has gotta be done'.

Coleman contacted a user on an encrypted messaging app who connected him with someone selling a Makarov pistol.

Two months before his arrest, Coleman appeared to turn toward purchasing a firearm, withdrawing £6,000 from his bank account and filming himself counting the money to prove seriousness.

A week before his 18th birthday, Coleman researched 'most advanced weapons used by terrorists'.

After 11 months of research, Coleman began the first draft of his plan for a terror attack, writing in his phone notes titled 'Collapse' and identifying the target as the 'Mayor of London house'.

By November 2021, Coleman possessed 10 illegal documents of terrorist material, including guides to explosives and 'silent killing', one of which contained a paragraph on using a garrote.

In July 2021, Coleman wrote in a email to Patriotic Alternative that he would like to start participating in activism and described himself as a '17-year-old proud white European'.

One month into the UK Covid-19 lockdown, Coleman saved a document to his iPad: a copy of a book written by an American neo-Nazi in the 1980s.