SMALL: DEALER SHOT DEAD ADDICT AFTER HENCHMAN WAS ROBBED

A drug dealer who shot dead a thieving addict because he robbed one of his henchmen is facing a life sentence today (Tues).

Anthony Small, 31, executed crack cocaine user Anthony Dickson after luring him to a park in revenge for the theft.

The 37-year-old was shot twice in the chest with a sub-machine gun on December 23 last year.

An Old Bailey jury unanimously convicted Small of murder today (Tues) after a three-week trial.

Small, who goes by the street name ‘Chocs’, ran a drug dealing operation selling heroin and crack in Hayes, Middlesex, the court was told.

A mobile phone used by his gang to arrange transactions had been called 5,286 times in just three weeks last December.

Two weeks before his death, on December 8, Mr Dickson was said to have mugged one of Small’s drug pushers, stealing crack and cash.

Following the robbery, his girlfriend received a phonecall demanding to know his whereabouts, and telling her: ‘It’s Anthony we want’

On December 23, desperate for a hit, Mr Dickson called Small and asked to meet up to buy crack.

His girlfriend drove him to the meeting point, by a park in Marvell Avenue, Hayes, and dropped him off.

There Small gunned him down and later threw away his phone and burned his clothes in an attempt to cover his tracks.

Giving evidence, the dealer insisted he was ‘just a runner’ earning cash to fund his own crack and heroin habit, and had no reason to carry out the gangland killing.

‘I’m not the top man,’ he said.

Simon Denison QC, prosecuting, asked: ‘What happens to people who rob drug dealers of their drugs?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ replied Small.

Mr Denison: ‘People who rob drug dealers have to be taught a lesson, don’t they?’

Small: ‘Not by me they don’t.’

Following his arrest, in a defence statement, he admitted he ‘may have been in the same borough when the shooting occurred.’

Small, of (175) High Street, Harlesden, northwest London, denied murder but was convicted by the jury.

He was remanded in custody and will be sentenced at a date to be fixed.
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