WILSON: DOUBLE MURDER IN FRIEND’S FEUD

Two men were shot dead in the ‘terrible end game’ of a feud amongst school friends, the Old Bailey heard today (Thurs).

Jayson Hassan, 28, and Lee Wallace, 25, were picked off by two gunmen who had been waiting for them outside a block of flats.

Mr Hassan had fallen out with his long-term friend Daniel Wilson, 28, and had threatened to kill him just days before his own death.

The court heard Mr Hassan was a cocaine dealer and used Wilson as a runner to peddle drugs on the streets.

Prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC said Wilson had a £3,000 debt with Mr Hassan who also wanted two handguns returned to him which Wilson had been storing.

Wilson is said to have recruited his Muslim-convert uncle Wayne Wilson, 42, and a third man Rodney Morrison, 43, to help him take revenge, after receiving a string of threatening text messages.

‘Daniel Wilson and Wayne Wilson went to give the guns back, but not in the way Jayson Hassan or indeed Lee Wallace could ever have anticipated,’ said the prosecutor.

Mr Hassan and Mr Wallace were gunned down outside Strang House in Britannia Row, Islington, north London, in the early hours of November 9 last year.

Wallace died instantly, while Hassan died from his injuries the following day.

Mr Aylett said: ‘The first police officers to arrive were confronted by an appalling scene. Outside the flats two men were laying on the ground. They both had gunshot wounds.

‘One of them, Lee Wallace was already dead. The other Jayson Hassan has sustained terrible injuries from which he would die later that day.

‘The two men were some distance apart outside this block of flats.

‘They were in fact on either side of the main entrance to the block of flats.

‘They had been attacked as they came out of that entrance. One had run one way, one the other.

‘It was to be to no avail because not one but two gunmen had been waiting for them and picked off one victim each.

‘This was the terrible end game in the falling out between two drug dealers.’

The court heard Wilson had been working for Mr Hassan for some time and had taken possession of two guns from him, which he buried in the back garden of the house next door to his grandmother’s home in Lichfield Road, Bow, east London.

In September 2009 Wilson was arrested at the address after police officers with a search warrant found 40g of cocaine, 55g of skunk weed and three unfired .22-calibre cartridges

Wilson was subsequently charged but released on bail and remained on bail throughout 2010.

He was still on bail for those offences when he gunned down Mr Hassan.

Wilson has admitted offences of possession with intent to supply and a possession of ammunition without a certificate and is now serving a sentence of three years and nine months.

The pair had known each other from school and had remained friends as they grew up.

They argued in the autumn of last year when Wilson ‘dropped off the radar’ for a few days and Mr Hassan could not contact him.

In a series of threatening text messages during late October and early November, Mr Hassan demanded his money £3,000 and the return of his guns.

In one he warned: ‘I’m going to shank you. If you don’t phone me back in 10 see if I’m joking.’

He threatened to smash the windows of Mr Wilson’s flat, suggested he would send someone to his grandmother’s house and warned he would have his girlfriend attacked.

‘You’re f***ing taking food out of my daughter’s mouth,’ he wrote.

On another occasion he had held a knife to the throat of Mr Wilson’s partner as he searched Bow for him, jurors were told.

Just days before the killing the Wilson family travelled to Preston, Lancashire, where Wayne Wilson was to marry in a Muslim wedding.

He also spoke with Mr Hassan on the phone and is said to have returned to London with his nephew after becoming angered by the threats.

Mr Aylett said that in the wake of the killing Wayne Wilson shaved-off his long beard which he had grown after converting to Islam.

Daniel Wilson, of Lichfield Road, Bow, east London; his uncle Wayne Wilson, of St Phillips Road, Preston, Lancashire; and Morrison, of Lancaster Road, Stratford, east London, each deny two counts of murder.

The trial continues.

ends