For Magda Pniewska, London was meant to be a city of opportunity where she could fulfil her dream of becoming a trained nurse and save for her wedding day.

The bustling capital was a stark contrast to the drab and run down, post-Communist industrial Polish town of Brzeg where she had been brought up.

Just a few days after Poland joined the EU in May 2004, Miss Pniewska, like so many other well educated and ambitious Poles of her age, escaped the poor employment and pay prospects in her home country and moved to Britain.

Her parents were inevitably anxious when their youngest daughter announced her plans.

Moments before Miss Pniewska boarded the plane on her birthday on May 12, her tearful mother, Barbara, 52, urged her to take care.

“The last words I said to her were, ‘Watch out. Be careful.’” Mrs Pniewska said. She had given her daughter 23 red roses, one for each year of her life.

In England Miss Pniewska started work as a care assistant at the BUPA Manley Court nursing home in New Cross, South East London, and quickly became popular with patients. Renowned for her smile and dedication, she became responsible for organising events for patients, many of whom were struggling with severe disabilities or were mentally ill.

Soon her boyfriend, 25-year-old Radoslaw Lipka, joined her in England and the couple moved to the New Cross estate. Their flat was a short walk from the nursing home where Mr Lipka got employment as a gardener and odd-job man.

In 2006 the couple became engaged and began to plan and save for their wedding.

Each night back in her home town of Brzeg, her father, Ryszard, a 58-year-old welder, and sister, Elzbieta Luby, 34, an agricultural consultant, would huddle around the phone in their fifth floor block of flats to listen to Miss Pniewska regale her adventures in England.

But Miss Pniewska also expressed her concerns that London was in the grip of a crime wave. She told of the regular newspaper headlines about gang warfare and teenage shootings, before explaining that once married she would move to the North of England to bring up a family.

“She told me London was no place to have a family,” Mrs Pniewska said.

Miss Pniewska became so concerned about crime that she bought her dog over from Poland to help her feel more safe on the housing estate.

On the fateful day in October last year, she was carrying shopping and a toy one of the patients had given her for her dog as she walked home after finishing her 9am to 6pm shift.

It was then that her sister telephoned to hear about her romantic trip to Paris with her fiancé a few days earlier. Moments later and just a short distance from the BUPA nursing home where she had become so popular, Miss Pniewska unwittingly walked into the crossfire between two gunmen settling a debt over money and drugs.

Ms Luby was distraught as she told the Old Bailey of the moment she heard just how violent the streets of London were.

“I heard several shots....three or four. There was a short break between the third and fourth shot, like a moment of hesitation,” she said.

As the pistol shots rang out, Ms Luby, known as Ella, asked her sister: “What’s happening there. Who’s shooting? What’s going on?”

Miss Pniewska replied: “Ella, just wait a minute.” It was then Ms Luby heard the final, fatal shot.

“I heard the last breath of Magda. I heard when she fell down, I heard the bags fall down. There was silence for a minute and then I heard two more shots.

Despite the frantic telephone calls that followed, Ms Luby and her parents had to wait seven hours before eventually discovering that their daughter had been murdered.

For Mr Lipka, the city that was meant to have offered so much promise instead shattered his dreams and robbed him of the woman he had planned to marry.

He has now returned to Poland, taking with him the roses Miss Pniewska had dried that her parents had given her three years earlier.

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