Getting the boys together’
Hemmings was acting as a “go-between” with Daniels, with one text saying: “Tell our mate I got a message to pass onto him, pop over a min, or ring one or other.”
Another message added: “Ring me, need to pass a message on to tell the other fella.”
Mr McEntee told the trial: “We say that a robbery such as that conducted at Mr Baldwin’s, involving men arriving in numbers, armed and masked, inevitably requires a degree of planning, and that the days immediately before the commission of such an offence must be critical in drawing those plans together.”
Three weeks after the “excessively violent” robbery, Hemmings received a message from a phone attributed to Hill, it is alleged.
That said: “Got tha [sic] air gun sold mate, can I c u when you finish plz [sic] mate.”
The prosecution allege this is a reference to one of the four guns stolen from farmer Mr Baldwin’s home during the raid the previous month.
At the end of the robbery, on Back Lane, Aughton, one of the gang, brandishing two guns, told Mr
Baldwin and his partner Patricia Musselle: “Don’t call the police for an hour, cos if you do I’ll come back and kill you.”
After the robbery, Mr Baldwin’s bank cards were used at a cash point on Longmoor Lane, Fazakerley, about an hour later, when £300 was withdrawn and then amounts of £300 and £275, with Daniels’ phone cell sited in that area. The jury was told how between July 29, the day after the incident, and August 4, ringleader Daniels “attempted to contact Hill on 20 occasions.” Mr McEntee said: “In the light of these elements of the evidence, we will invite you consider the evidence of ANPR cameras on the A506 which recorded the Audi [registered to Hill], travelling in a generally westerly direction having been recorded first at 22:39:55 and then at 22:40:32 in the area of Longmoor Road. “The prosecution say that the context in which to consider the pattern of Alan Daniels’ phone contact with Anthony Hill is to note that Hill’s vehicle was in the vicinity of the cashpoint where Daniels was realising proceeds of the robbery.”
The trial continues.