KIDNAP GANG’S SENTENCES WON’T GO TO COURT OF APPEAL

THE sentences handed to a kidnap gang who snatched a child on Anglesey will not be referred to the Court of Appeal.

Wilfred Wong led a gang of six people who snatched a North Wales child from their foster carer as they arrived home from their school on November 4, 2020.

A jury at Caernarfon Crown Court in July decided the 51-year-old was guilty of conspiring with others to kidnap the child and possessing a knife in a public place during the abduction bid.

Between them all, the gang-of-six were jailed for more than 63 years for their “chilling” abduction plot.

Janet Stevenson, 67, and her husband Edward Stevenson, 69, of Crawley, West Sussex, were jailed for 15 and eight years respectively after being ready in a hired getaway car to take the child away from Wales.

Both of Holyhead, Jane Going-Hill, 60, and Kristine Ellis-Petley, 58, were sentenced for their role as “lookouts” on bridges from Anglesey to the mainland to spot any police activity on the car’s escape routes.

Going-Hill was sentenced to four years and eight months whilst Ellis-Petley got four years.

The child was safely recovered when the hire car was stopped by police on the M1 in Northamptonshire.

It was recently reported how the Attorney General’s office was to consider whether the sentences of all six were unduly lenient, following a request from an unnamed person.

But later last week, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office said: “After careful consideration the Solicitor General has concluded that this case cannot properly be referred to the Court of Appeal.

“A referral under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme to the Court of Appeal can only be made if a sentence is not just lenient but unduly so, such that the sentencing judge made a gross error or imposed a sentence outside the range of sentences reasonably available in the circumstances of the offence.

“The threshold is a high one, and the test was not met in this case.”