Gun found after thugs robbed terrified driver

DRUG DEALER AND PAL LOCKED UP AFTER BEING CAUGHT ON CCTV

A HANDGUN was found in a house after a teenage cannabis dealer robbed a driver with a friend.

Andrew Ochonma and Jakub Kobus were captured on CCTV footage targeting the man as he returned to his vehicle after visiting a friend in Birkby.

The pair, now both aged 20, have been locked up after pleading guilty to robbery.

Ochonma, of Trinity Street in Huddersfield town centre, was locked up for three years and 10 months. He also pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply cannabis in relation to a previous incident.

Kobus, of Lockwood Scar, Lockwood, was locked up for eight months.

Prosecutor Helen Chapman said the robbery happened as the victim returned to his car, which was parked on Norwood Road, on the evening of September 26 last year.

She said he noticed the pair standing in a nearby alleyway and they ran at him so he got in his car.

Kobus kicked the driver’s window until it shattered. Ochonma got into the back of the car and the frightened victim opened the driver’s door and ran off. The pair then rummaged through the car and stole an iPhone, a bag containing beauty supplies and a car document wallet. Police used Find My iPhone to track the phone to a house on nearby Clough Road.

Leeds Crown Court heard officers went to the address where they found the pair, the iPhone and a bag containing a starting pistol. The prosecutor said there was no suggestion the handgun was used in the robbery.

Police stopped a black taxi on Yew Green Road in Lockwood, Huddersfield and arrested Ochonma and others on July 31, 2019. Two mobile phones and a rucksack containing 57 bags of skunk cannabis, which had a street value of £570, were seized.

Ochonma made no comment in his police interview. Conor Quinn, mitigating for Ochonma, who appeared in court via a video link from custody in HMP Doncaster, said his client was a teenager at the time of the offences, entered early guilty pleas and has had to spent 23 hours and 15 minutes per day in his cell in custody. He asked the judge to keep his client’s immediate custodial sentence to as short as possible.

Anastasis Tasou, mitigating for Kobus, said his client was a teenager at the time of the offences.