GUN GANG’S TRADE IN DEADLY WEAPONS
Brave cop stops guns getting on our streets
This ammo is horrific, it’s only there for devastation
TRAGIC David and Claire lost son Joshua in the gun slaughter
A GANG smuggling deadly Taurus handguns from the US concealed in Bluetooth speakers was foiled in a daring undercover police operation.
A brave officer, known only as Jimmy, infiltrated the gang for a year and a half in a mission called Operation Billboard.
He got them to sell him a 40-calibre self-loading handgun for £4,000 and two 9mm self-loading handguns for £7,000, keeping them off our streets. They were to be supplied with hollow-point ammunition that shreds victims’ insides, but this was stopped in Miami, Florida, due to Jimmy’s efforts.
The guns bought in Atlanta, Georgia, were hidden in foam inside speakers, sent to addresses in Fishponds in Bristol and Hackney, East London, and advertised on encrypted social media messaging platforms.
Alcot Flemming, 44, from Weston, Somerset, Kenville Hall, 30, and Busiso Benjamin, 30, of Fishponds, and Rhafeek Morson, 29, from Hackney, admitted conspiring to supply a firearm. Hall also admitted conspiracy to possess ammunition and was jailed for 17 years and two months at Bristol crown court.
Fleming got 10 years five months,
Benjamin got 12 years and Morson 11 years five months.
Nico Lacroix, 23, of Fishponds, got four months suspended for encouraging or assisting an offence.
It is believed the gang could have had 10 guns for sale. The guns and ammunition were the type involved in the killing of 28-year-old Joshua Bains by county lines drug dealers in Northampton in 2018. Joshua’s dad Dave, 66,
said: “As far as I’m concerned the man who imported the gun pulled the trigger. Hollow-point ammo is horrific – only there for devastation.” Stepmum Claire said: “It’s horrific this weaponry is turning up on our streets.”
Det Chief Insp Simon Dewfall, of Avon and Somerset police, said: “This gang didn’t have a care for the devastation those firearms would cause on our streets.”
Matthew Perfect, of National Crime Agency, said: “I am absolutely sure that if they hadn’t been disrupted this early they would have gone on to sell more firearms into the UK marketplace.”
DAVE BAINS DAD OF MURDERED JOSHUA