Three men were jailed for a total of 29 years over an armed cash-in-transit robbery in Liverpool’s Chinatown and a Wirral supermarket ram-raid.
Shop workers were left terrified when Lesley Aitchison, 38, and Spencer Benjamin, 43, struck at the Tesco Express in Eastham at around 11pm on May 9 last year.
Liverpool Crown Court heard how staff hid in an office as three masked men reversed a car into the store, smashed through shutters and made off with £2,000 in cash.
While on bail, Aitchison and Benjamin teamed up with Ian Porter, 46, to carry out the £60,000 Chinatown robbery on Monday, July 20.
Two security guards were refilling a cashpoint, near the corner of Nelson Street and Duke Street, at around 10.25am, when Aitchison threatened them with an imitation handgun.
Graham Pickavance, prosecuting, said that in the first raid Tesco staff had been counting up money when they heard a loud crashing noise.
They fled and watched on internal CCTV as three masked men grabbed the cash and escaped in the Vauxhall Corsa.
Police recovered the car in New Chester Road on May 10. It had false plates and had been stolen from a home in Aigburth four days earlier.
Police discovered Benjamin hired a Peugeot 308 on April 27 and it was caught on camera entering Birkenhead tunnel, followed by the Corsa, on May 9.
Mr Pickavance said: “A glove was found in the Peugeot with DNA recovered from it, which was 350,000 times more likely to have come from Benjamin than not.
A cash-in-transit robbery on the corner of Nelson Street where it meets Great George Street and Upper Duke Street in Liverpool
“On that glove eight glass fragments were recovered. They were found to be consistent with the glass from the broken Tesco door.”
During the Chinatown robbery, the security guards were removing boxes containing £20,000 in £10 notes and £40,000 in £20 notes.
They spotted a Vauxhall Insignia pulling up – stolen that morning from Liverpool Women’s Hospital car park.
The masked passenger got out, pointed the handgun at one security guard and shouted “give us the f***ing money”.
The vehicle was tracked to Solway Street West in Toxteth, where Benjamin lived, and followed by a Ford Focus.
Mr Pickavance said both cars went to nearby Vandyke Street, where two men got in the Ford.
Police recovered the Insignia bearing false plates, which belonged to a car that bungling Benjamin had hired in his own name. He later claimed it had been stolen.
Officers raided Porter’s home in Longborough Road, Prescot and recovered a balaclava, gloves and dark clothing in a garden shed, including trousers showing Benjamin’s DNA.
Porter said Aitchison, of no fixed address but from the Kensington area, had asked him to pick him up and denied knowledge of the robbery.
Benjamin was seen with a large quantity of notes at a shop on July 20. He was arrested on July 21 and made no comment.
Mr Pickavance said Aitchison was arrested in Blackpool, “where he had gone on a spending spree” with his two children. He made no comment.
Aitchison was also sentenced over dealing £200 of crack cocaine and £120 of heroin in Boundary Lane, Everton , on September 18, 2014.
When police spotted him dealing drugs he claimed “my mate was giving me a tenner” but he had £240 in cash.
Tesco Express store in Mill Park Drive, Eastham, closed following a ram-raid
Aitchison admitted two counts of robbery, possession of an imitation firearm, and two counts of possession with intent to supply Class A drugs.
He has 24 previous convictions for 47 offences and this is his third conviction for Class A drug dealing.
Peter Killen, defending, said his client started using Class A drugs at 21, after he was a passenger in a car when his friend died in a crash.
Benjamin pleaded guilty to both robberies, saying he provided a car only knowing it was for a “high value robbery”.
He had 16 previous convictions for 40 offences, including two robberies, and was previously jailed for 10 years for a drugs conspiracy.
Frank Dillion, defending, said the dad-of-two had no idea a gun would be used.
Porter admitted the Chinatown robbery, saying he was recruited to drive the Ford and had no knowledge of the gun. He has one caution for cannabis possession.
Anthony O’Donohoe, defending, said Porter became involved as he was “using and abusing alcohol and drugs”.
Judge Elizabeth Nicholls said the robbery required “a considerable degree of planning”.
She said it was easy to imagine the “absolute fear” endured by staff “hiding and sheltering in Tesco”.
Judge Nicholls jailed Aitchinson for 16 years, Benjamin for eight years and Porter for five years – noting that it was his first time in prison.
She said: “Prison is shocking, but so was this offence.”
The Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts, Liverpool Crown Court. File picture. Photo by Ian Cooper
After the sentencing Detective Constable Alison Hanlon said:“These men operated as an organised gang who specialised in violent robberies. During the Liverpool incident they attacked two cash delivery guards at an ATM and threatened them with a gun. This happened in broad daylight and shocked many people who were passing by at the time.
“They escaped in a waiting car but thankfully when they abandoned it in a street in Toxteth a member of the public spotted this suspicious behaviour and called the police. This helped us progress our initial enquiries and the offenders were caught.
“Several of the defendants were also involved in the ram raid of a Tesco store in Eastham which happened late at night but when staff were still inside. It was an extremely reckless act and it is only through sheer good luck that an innocent member of the public wasn’t hurt.
“Robberies like this are not victimless crimes. The victims who are threatened with weapons or injured during the robbery have to live with that ordeal for the rest of their lives. Some aren’t able to return to work. Businesses suffer financial losses and that impacts the lives of owners and employees.
“That is why we do everything we can to catch the people who commit this type of organised crime so they can’t do it again.”
Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/