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Selfridges smash-and-grab gang handed 58 years in jail (19 August 2014)

Date: 19/08/2014
Duncan Lewis, Legal News Solicitors, Selfridges smash-and-grab gang handed 58 years in jail

A gang who dressed in burkas to carry out a smash-and-grab raid on Selfridges jewellery department in the West End have been jailed for a total of 58 years at Kingston Crown Court.

The Daily Mail reports that the sentences for the gang ranged from eight to 15 years – some of the gang’s relatives broke down as Judge Nicholas Jones handed down the sentences.

The gang managed to steal £1.5 million-worth of designer watches in the violent raid, having carried out a similar raid at a jeweller’s in Windsor the week before the Selfridges heist.

Staff and customers at the Oxford Street department store were terrified as the gang smashed glass display cases and grabbed the watches in the raid on 6 June 2013.

They carried axes and sledgehammers and the damage and missing stock cost the department store more than £2m. Some of the stolen watches were recovered, however.

Two members of the gang were sentenced last week and another will be sentenced next week.

Two of the gang were apprehended by passersby, after they crashed their scooter while trying to escape from the scene of the robbery in Oxford Street.

In court, Judge Jones said the Selfridges raid was “a professionally planned and carefully executed robbery”.
“The target of that robbery was Selfridges – the vehicles were stolen in advance and you entered the store half-an-hour before it closed on June 6 last year,” he told the court.
“You walked in with your faces disguised by burkas and smashed the jewellery cases with axes.

“At the time, Selfridges was busy with shoppers – members of staff and the public were understandably terrified. One asked a taxi driver to take her ‘anywhere’ to get away.

“The watches stolen had a value of almost £1.5million and, as is inevitable with such wanton destruction, there was damage caused to the store. One hundred of the watches remain unaccounted for.

“Sledgehammers, axes and burkas were also used in the Windsor robbery – the door was smashed, four men entered in burkas and stole Rolex watches.

“Damage was caused as well – an axe was held over the head by one robber, no doubt to stop any bystanders intervening as they made their escape.

“These were professionally organised robberies.”
In the dock, members of the gang held their heads in their hands as the sentences were read out, while others patted each other on the back in support.

The gang members who have been convicted already have a catalogue of previous convictions for theft, firearms offences, drugs offences and public disorder offences.

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