A teenage gunman who assassinated a rival crook wa

A teenage gunman who assassinated a rival crook was jailed for life today (WED) as an Old Bailey judge paid tribute to the girlfriend who betrayed him.

Ricky Sweeney, then 18, coolly pumped up to six bullets into Dean Roberts, 20, in a terrifying tit-for-tat shooting.

But detectives involved in Operation Trident – the Met’s initiative against Yardie-style gun crime – took more than a year to track down Sweeney.

The breakthrough finally came some 14 months after the killing when Sweeney’s girlfriend Sophie Lewis came forward.

Miss Lewis told police how Sweeney had boasted to her about carrying out the murder.

She has now been relocated at a secret address
under the witness protection scheme.

Her testimony helped put Sweeney behind bars and she now faces an uncertain future.

Sweeney, now 20, executed Mr Roberts in a quiet north London street after blaming him for the death of a ‘good friend’ two years earlier.

And Sweeney felt that Mr Roberts, a rival drug dealer, was ‘getting too big for his boots.

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Stephen Kramer QC, prosecuting, said Sweeney lured the victim to his death in Furness Road, Willesden late at night, back in July 1999.

Sweeney, whose own brother was murdered in 1997, ordered Mr Roberts out of a minicab and then shot him five or six times.

The jury of six men and six women took six hours and 47 minutes to convict Sweeney of murdering Mr Roberts on July 5, 1999, by a majority of 11-to-one.

Sweeney, of Tintern Avenue, Colindale, denied the charge and even claimed he wept after hearing about the death of his ‘friend’ Mr Roberts.

Passing sentence Judge David Stokes, QC, told Sweeney: ‘This can properly be described as a carefully planned, cold-blooded assassination.

‘Had it not been for the actions of that exceptionally brave young woman Sophie Lewis, who had the courage to confront you at some risk to her future safety, you may never have been caught.

‘

Sweeney showed no emotion as he was sentenced to youth detention for life.

Mr Kramer had told jurors: ‘This was a revenge attack by Sweeney who believed that some 20 months before, Dean Roberts killed a man called Marcus Charles who had been a good friend of Sweeney.

‘We also say Ricky Sweeney felt that Dean, the man he shot, was getting too big for his boots.

‘This feeling was compounded in May or June 1999 when he saw Roberts arguing with another of his close friends.

‘And what Sweeney did was engineer a meeting between Roberts and an intermediary so that he could carry out the shooting.

‘

The court heard how the victim was unemployed with a pregnant girlfriend and was ‘actively involved in drug dealing’.

Mr Kramer said he used a Willesden taxi firm to shuttle him from address to address to make his ‘deliveries’.

‘Roberts would sit in the front seat and ask the driver to play his hip hop music tapes while directing him to various addresses where he would make stops lasting between four and five minutes.

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On the night of the shooting, the victim had visited addresses in the Kilburn and Willesden areas before recognising an acquaintance sat in a car parked in Furness Road.

Mr Roberts asked the driver to pull alongside the vehicle and the pair began to talk through their open windows.

The court heard how Sweeney, who had known Mr Roberts about four years, approached the car flanked by another man and asked the victim to ‘come here’.

Mr Kramer continued: ‘Roberts got out of the car and the two men began to talk.

The cab driver then watched as Sweeney raised his right arm from underneath his jacket and shot him in the head.

‘As he fell to the ground, Sweeney not content with one shot, shot him again.

The man accompanied by Sweeney is unknown to us.

‘The taxi driver was understandably scared and reversed away.

Some residents in the street heard five to six shots fired.

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Sweeney was not arrested until September last year.

ends