LAWRENCE SUSPECT ‘FLED DRUGS COPS’
Trial told Acourt went on run in Spain
STEPHEN Lawrence murder suspect Jamie Acourt fled to Spain after police raided his home over a multi-million pound drugs ring, a court heard.
Acourt, 42, was out when officers arrived but told a detective on the phone that he would hand himself in before going on the run for two years.
He was arrested after living in hiding using the alias Simon Alfonzo.
Police raided his home in Bexley, South East London, where he lived with his partner, Terri-Ann Dean, and their two children, in 2016.
Prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC said Ms Dean returned home, rang Acourt and passed the phone to an officer, who told him to return or hand himself to a police station.
“The defendant did neither. Instead, he went to Spain, where he remained for over two years,” Mr Aylett told the jury.
He was arrested in May in Barcelona, where he had been using the Alfonzo name in which he also held a false passport, he added.
It was claimed he was one of the “ringleaders” of a plot to supply “huge quantities” of cannabis from London to South Shields, South Tyneside.
His brother Neil Acourt has already been found guilty.
“Since the delivery men were taking most of the risks and the defendant and his brother were receiving the money, the prosecution allege the defendant and his brother must have been the ringleaders,” Mr Aylett said.
“That the defendant and his brother were at the heart of what was going on is also apparent from the fact that among the delivery men were the fathers of their respective partners.”
Lee Birks, 57, the stepfather of Jamie Acourt’s partner, and Jack Vose, 65, Neil Acourt’s father-in-law, have already been convicted over the drug ring. The court heard conspirators were watched by undercover police from July 2014. They made at least 34 600-mile return trips to ferry money or hashish during a twoyear period.
Vose was arrested in South Shields with 220lb of the drug worth an estimated £200,000 in his van in February 2016.
Jamie Acourt, of no fixed address, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to supply the Class B drug between January 1, 2014 and February 2, 2016.
Jurors were told he was never convicted over Stephen’s killing in 1993.
He has always denied involvement in the attack, when a white gang fatally stabbed the black 18-year-old at a bus stop in Eltham, South East London.
Six men, including 43-year-old Neil Acourt, Vose, of Bexley, South East London, and Birks, of Orpington, Kent, have already been convicted and sentenced over the conspiracy.
Jamie Acourt’s trial continues. HISTORY Acourt in 1997