Three convicted of Burnley shotgun raid (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Three convicted of Burnley shotgun raid

7:51am Saturday 21st July 2012 in Crime news

A SHOTGUN raid on a Burnley general store and a Bury bookmakers has seen three plotters convicted.

Staff at the Spar in Melville Street, Burnley, were targetted by a masked Gulhassan Khan, 23, just hours after he raided the Tote bookies in Moorgate, Bury, Burnley Crown Court heard.

CCTV footage also showed Mohammed Abdul Ghafaar and Wajid Khan, both 19, ‘staking out’ the bookies in September 2009, before the premises were hit.

Ghafaar, of Merton Street, and Khan, of Kent Street, both Burnley, admitted to conspiracy to rob the two premises partway through a trial.

Co-defendants Owess Khan, 22, of Fifth Avenue, and Syed Hassan Reza, 23 of Gordon Street, also Burnley, were acquitted of both charges on the direction of trial judge Beverley Lunt.

Khan, of Burnley Road, Colne, had pleaded guilty to the two conspiracy charges before the trial commenced.

Jurors were shown footage of Khan and an accomplice, wearing dark clothing and masks. bursting into the bookies and later the Spar store. Prosecutors said £123 was taken in the Tote raid but it was not revealed how much was stolen in the Spar incident.

The guilty trio will face sentence at the same court on August 10.

Meanwhile a decision on a possible retrial on a sixth man, Mohammed Usman Khan, 22, of Kent Street, Burnley, who denies the two conspiracy charges will be taken on July 27.

He is claiming that he was forced to carry out the two raids with Gulhassan Khan ‘under duress’.