Four jailed over lorry hijacking

Feb 7 2008 By Paul Beard

FOUR men who were involved in handling electrical goods and other property taken when a lorry on its way to Birmingham airport was hijacked have all been jailed.

Lee O'Brien, 37, of Lea Hall Road, Stechford, who had pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to conspiring with the hijackers to handle the haul was jailed for three years.

Cornell Edmead, 32, of Braymoor Road, Tile Cross, and Kieron Lewis, 25, also of Braymoor Road, had pleaded guilty to handling stolen property on the day they had been due to stand trial.

They were both jailed for 18 months. Martin Wiltshire, 38, of Church Road, Stechford, who had admitted the handling charge at an earlier hearing was jailed for 15 months.

Prosecuting, Neil Chawla told the court that in April last year Steven Sparkes, a lorry driver with Alpha Retail, was transporting duty free goods, including electrical items, watches, jewellery, cigarettes and liquor, to Birmingham airport.

When he stopped at traffic lights by the Holiday Inn on the A45 Coventry Road, the driver's door was suddenly opened from the outside and he was pulled from the cab.

The lorry and its £55,655 load was driven away, followed by a blue Peugeot car.

The car registration was taken by a woman who saw the hijacking.The lorry was later found abandoned on the A38, but that afternoon police officers saw a blue Transit van being unloaded outside the Lea Hall Lane home of O'Brien's parents.

Ten minutes later the officers stopped the Transit as it was being driven by Wiltshire, with Edmead and Lewis in the cab and £5,000 worth of the stolen property in the back.

Mr Chawla said O'Brien had entered his guilty plea on the basis that he had been contacted that afternoon by someone in relation to personal stereos, CD players and cameras, which he knew to be stolen property.

O'Brien said he agreed to have them delivered to his parents' address, from where they were to be collected by another person.

Wiltshire pleaded guilty on the basis that he had been contacted an hour before he had been stopped to transport the property.