Jailed for 10 years: gangster’s girl seduced by gun ‘glamour’
A GUN-RUNNER’S girlfriend who took a “selfie” holding an assault rifle while wearing a leotard and a balaclava has been jailed for 10 years for her part in his crime empire that he ran from jail.
Caitlin Adams, 25, was involved in what detectives said was a gangland plot to sell reactivated illegal guns and ammunition to criminals in London.
Adams, who had a child with Brown, was told by the judge yesterday that she was probably attracted by the “glamour” of illegal weapons.
She picked up deactivated firearms and took them to a workshop to be brought back into use for her boyfriend Ishmael Brown, who was running operations via a smuggled mobile phone while a serving prisoner.
The guns included an AK-47 assault rifle, and police discovered a photo taken by Adams as she posed in a kitchen with the semi-automatic weapon.
Five gang members, including Adams, were given jail sentences totalling 45 years at Harrow Crown Court yesterday.
Police had intercepted a taxi in the Newham area of east London in June and arrested Aaron Murray and Uzair Patel when a reactivated 9mm handgun was found in the footwell.
Investigations discovered that Murray was buying deactivated guns and bringing them back into use at a workshop.
The site was raided and its owner Bart Pawlowski, a former Polish soldier and metalworker, was arrested.
Detectives said Brown was using a phone smuggled into his cell at Rochester prison to buy deactivated guns and then sell them to criminals once they had been converted back to live firing. Another prisoner, Ehsen Abdul-Razak, was arrested after he helped sell the pistol to Patel using his own illicit phone.
Police believe that between January and June last year more than 40 guns were sourced by the gang. Eight reactivated firearms linked to the group have been found and police are searching for more.
Adams, of Lewisham, was convicted of conspiracy to transfer prohibited weapons and sentenced to 10 years; Brown, 26, admitted the same charge and was given 12 years.
Pawlowski, 42, of Wandsworth, was found guilty of the same offence and was jailed for 13 years; Patel, 28, of Stratford, east London, admitted possessing a prohibited weapon and was jailed for five years.
Abdul-Razak, 19, admitted conspiracy to transfer prohibited weapons and was sentenced to five years. Murray, 28, of Wandsworth, who pleaded guilty to the same offence, will be sentenced in March.
Judge Graham Arran told Adams yesterday: “You became involved because you are the partner of Brown and mother of his child.
“Your role was to acquire deactivated firearms sometimes using fake stories about the purpose. You went around the country performing the task.
“It is difficult to understand your motives in their entirety. However, it seems likely that you were attracted by the apparent glamour of firearms and their illegality. Your participation was entirely willing.”
Det Con Claire Gentles, from the Met Police’s Trident and Area Crime Command gang squad, said: “The firearms and ammunition this gang converted had the potential to cause great harm on the streets of London. The capital is a safer place as a result of the network being dismantled.”