Four men were today found guilty of murdering two teenage girls who were gunned down outside a New Year party two years ago.

Charlene Ellis, 18, and Letisha Shakespeare, 17, died in a hail of bullets in a drive-by shooting outside the Uniseven hairdressing salon in Aston, in the early hours of January 2 2003.

Today their killers were found guilty by a jury at Leicester Crown Court.

Marcus Ellis, 24, from Devonshire Avenue, Winson Green, Birmingham, Michael Gregory, 23, from Ryland Street, Ladywood, Birmingham, Nathan Martin, 26, from South Road, Smethwick, West Midlands and Rodrigo Simms, 20, from Whitehouse Drive, Smethwick, West Midlands, were all found guilty of murder.

Left to right: Marcus Ellis; Michael Gregory; Nathan Martin; Rodrigo Simms

The four defendants were also convicted of three counts of attempting to murder Charlene Ellis's twin sister Sophia and their friend Cheryl Shaw.

Three of the defendants, Martin, Gregory and Ellis, were also convicted of attempting to murder another partygoer, Leon Harris. Simms was cleared of the same charge.

The panel of seven women and five men were in their third day of deliberations at the end of the four-month trial.

Earlier, Mr Justice Goldring directed the jurors to consider majority verdicts after the forewoman told him they had not reached verdicts on which all 12 were agreed.

The shooting, which the prosecution claimed was a "botched" revenge attack by one rival gang on another.

Charlene's twin Sophia and Cheryl Shaw were also injured in the attack.

The four convicted of the murder included the twins' half-brother Marcus Ellis. Along with the other men, he was alleged to be a member of the Burger Bar Boys gang.

A fifth man, Jermaine Carty, 24, was cleared of possessing a firearm on the night of the shooting.

Carty, from Cheyne Walk, Lozells, Birmingham, was alleged to be a member of the rival Johnson Crew who had taunted the Burger Bar Boys on stage at a Solihull nightclub earlier in the evening.

The Crown alleged this was a "catalyst" for the shooting.

Martin is also said to have wanted to avenge the death of his brother, Yohanne, who was shot dead in West Bromwich in December 2002 in an attack blamed on the Johnson Crew.

The four men convicted of murder denied any links to gangs and any knowledge of the shooting.

They also rejected claims linking them to a number of mobile phones said to have been used in and around the salon in the minutes before the shootings and near where the car was later found burnt-out.