Sussex gang jailed for 37 years

The 17-year-old called the police, and beeped his horn to warn the security guards.

The masked men faltered, and they got back in their silver BMW to drive off.

The teenager did not know it at the time, but his actions were to lead to sentences totalling more than 30 years for a team of criminals responsible for a spree of crimes in Sussex.

Gang members stole high-performance cars from driveways by breaking into homes to get the keys.

They fitted them with false plates and used them as getaway cars in robberies in Brighton and Worthing.

At Lewes Crown Court, Judge Michael Lawson said: “These burglaries were carried out by a group of young men who clearly had a plan.

“It carried on over a period of time. These vehicles were disguised. They were used for other criminal purposes, including robberies.”

The gang’s planning was undermined by a trail of forensic evidence left behind after cars were stolen in burglaries.

At least one gang member would get mixed up in a fight involving two members of the extended Dawes family of Brighton.

And Zak Marsden and John Paul Gallagher were arrested trying to escape from the scene of the Moulsecoomb raid.

As defending counsel Rhodri James put it: “It was a bungled, abortive, ineffective robbery.

“At the first suggestion of any third party involvement, the tooting of a horn, it fell apart.”

The fate of several conspirators was sealed by the DNA and fingerprints they left at the scene of their crimes.

A total of eight were sentenced in groups of two or three at Lewes Crown Court because there were too many of them to fit into the Court Four dock.

Some appeared on bail, carrying overnight bags and kissing their friends and family goodbye before entering the dock to learn their fate.

Others were brought up from the cells, exchanging handshakes or embraces with their co-defendants and blowing kisses to their supporters in the public gallery.

The biggest single crime of which any members were accused was a raid on security guards collecting cash from Sainsbury’s at Lyons Farm in Worthing on March 8 last year.

The culprits got away in two cars and opened a cashbox containing £25,000.

The money, though, was stained with security dye. When a dyed banknote was found inside a ticket machine at Worthing railway station on March 12, tests showed it carried Adam Willis’s fingerprint. Paul Addison’s DNA was also found.

At that point the gang was only beginning the crime spree for which they were sentenced.

Gallagher, Willis, Addison, Thomas Hignett and Paul Henaghan were involved in burgling homes and stealing cars between February and July. Some were never found; others were used in crimes.

Addison, Hignett and Henaghan all come from the same Merseyside neighbourhood but had moved to Sussex for different reasons before being drawn into crime.

In the Moulsecoomb raid, the robbers planned to swap getaway cars to make good their escape.

A Mazda was deliberately parked on the other side of bollards.

When they fled in their BMW, pursued by police, they pulled up on one side of the bollards, and ran to get in the Mazda on the other side.

The chase had become desperate, though. One robber was carried for a time on the bonnet of the car.

It was eventually abandoned in Kimberley Road. While Marsden and Gallagher were arrested, Willis and Addison got away. Addison wasn’t caught until December.

Before then, he was involved in a fight alongside Gary Dawes and his step-brother Lee Wright.

Dawes approached a car containing three men outside The Volks nightclub in Madeira Drive and asked if he could buy cocaine.

He made a comment about the size of his muscles and ended up punching one of the men through the car window.

Lee Wright – Dawes’s stepbrother – joined Dawes in the attack, and Addison also took part.

After the sentencings, Judge Lawson commended the teenagerl and awarded him £250.

The teenager said later: “I was happy to hear the sentences. So many people saw it and did not think anything of it.

“I’m still pleased I did what I did.”