After serving eight years for a gangland shooting that left an innocent man fighting for his life, Connor Holland says he’s rebuilt himself through faith, fitness and a second chance – and now he’s preparing to run from London to Manchester to prove people can change.

07:22, 13 Dec 2025Updated 08:27, 13 Dec 2025

Connor Holland(Image: Connor Holland)

As he stood in the dock Connor Holland was in no doubt whatsoever. His life as he knew it was ‘over’. Then 22-years-old, he was being sent down over a botched gangland shooting in Salford that saw an innocent man gunned down in the street. Connor was jailed for 15 years for possession of a firearm, assault and possession of ammunition.

His mum Jane Blood and stepfather Dean Holland were also both sentenced to nine years in prison for their role in the attack. Their lives and that of their victim, who was left with life-threatening injuries after being shot in the chest, had been ruined.

And it was all because of what Connor describes as the actions of a ‘lost and desperate’ young man.

“My mum and step-dad were with me, I couldn’t stop thinking that it was all because of me,” he says. “That broke me into pieces.

Police at the scene of the shooting on Mill Hill, Little Hulton(Image: Manchester Evening News)

“I felt like my life was over. I was 22-years-old and it felt impossible that I was going to get through it.”

Fast forward more than eight years and Connor says things are very different. Now 30 and a free man he is, he says, proof that people can change.

He served his time in several prisons, including Strangeways and HMP Thameside in south east London. And while inside he discovered two things which helped turn his life around – fitness and religion.

“I’ll be honest, at first I couldn’t let my crap go,” he says. “I was still doing things I shouldn’t have been.

“But then I started training and it felt like ‘This is who I am’. It gave me a purpose, it gave me something to focus on, something to look forward to every day. I started being known for being this super-fit guy.

Connor began training while in prison and says it helped change his life(Image: Connor Holland)

“Exercise really can reshape your whole identity. Your brain is being rewired and that’s what I felt happening to me.”

And with that purpose Connor says he also began coming to terms with his past. Growing up in Little Hulton in Salford he says he got kicked out of school as a young boy and placed in a specialist behavioural unit before he joined the Army at 16.

But after leaving the military at 19 he got mixed up with some of Salford’s gangs. It led to the terrifying attack on June 4, 2016 when an innocent man was caught in the crossfire of a tit-for-tat feud between rival gangs in Little Hulton and Farnworth.

After spending three days in intensive care, the 33-year-old victim miraculously survived the shooting in Little Hulton, but later told the Manchester Evening News how he lives in ‘constant pain’.

Connor Holland pictured after being jailed in 2017(Image: MEN MEDIA)

Asked if he regrets what he did, Connor replies ‘100%’, adding: “I made a massive mistake. What the hell was I thinking?

“It all came down to feeling lost and desperate. The pressure of everything that was going on built up and I felt trapped and felt that this was the only way out.

“I was wrong. But in a funny way I’m grateful, because I think I have become the person I have become because of that.”

Connor says that while in prison he attempted to contact the victim through his chapel, without success. He says he’d now ‘love to have the chance to meet him and offer him my sincerest apologies’.

“I’m deeply sorry he was brought into that tragic situation,” he says. “Hopefully it might offer him some sort of comfort.”

Connor now works as an abseil window cleaner in London(Image: Connor Holland)

While in Thameside Connor began working with a charity which, on his release in April 2024, arranged some work for him as a window cleaner in London. But at first adjusting to a new life in a new city was tough.

“I had no friends, no family,” says Connor. “I was on £14 an hour and paying £1,000 a month for a room. It was hard to keep going and not go back to my old ways.”

But he persevered, and this summer he qualified as an abseil window cleaner, a hair-raising job which sees him dangling by a rope hundreds of feet in the air from some of the capital’s tallest buildings. Connor juggles his new daredevil occupation with shifts as a strength and conditioning coach at a gym in Clapham, south London. He’s now finally looking to the future with optimism.

“Now I’m genuinely happy to be able to go to work and go to the gym,” he says. “The little things give me massive pleasure now. It’s like my life is much brighter because I went through such dark times.”

Connor says he wants to show that ‘second chances are possible'(Image: Connor Holland)

This year he plans to spend Christmas at home in Salford for the first time since he was sent down. But, instead of catching the train, he’s going to run.

Setting off from London on December 15, he plans to run around 95km a day in order to reach a local club for a big family and friends homecoming four days later. He’ll be documenting the journey on his Instagram page.

He says he’s taking on such a gruelling challenge because he wants to show that ‘second chances are possible’ and that people can change their lives for the better.

“The idea of change, of letting go completely, can be daunting and overwhelming, he said. “I want to show that second chances are possible. I want to show how you can go from [being jailed] to being a guy who is able to run from London to Manchester.”