JUST OFF TO COURT MUM – MIGHT DO ANOTHER JOB ON THE WAY
A teenage robber carried out a £25,000 cash box snatch while on his way to court for an earlier raid, a court heard.
Fhazio Mulwinda, 19, was due to appear in the dock accused of driving a getaway car for a heist at an Esso filling station.
When he failed to turn up it emerged he had been arrested that morning at the scene of another robbery at a branch of the Alliance & Leicester in Ilford, Essex.
Mulwinda and his gang ‘The Smooth Money Makers’ have shocked detectives with their complete disrespect for the law.
During the trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court they shouted obscenities and dropped bits of cannabis in the dock when they got friends to smuggle drugs to them.
Mulwinda’s accomplice laughed in the faces of Flying Squad officers when he was arrested and said there was an endless line of youngsters ready to fill his shoes.
Neeko Brooks, 18, boasted: ‘You can’t stop it, all the young ‘uns are coming up.’
Mulwinda and six other members of the Forest Gate-based gang were jailed last year for mugging passengers on the Central and Bakerloo lines as they journeyed home Notting Hill carnival.
It was also revealed that Mulwinda was on bail for the job at the Leyton filling station when he went on the rampage on London’s transport network.
Mulwinda, who is currently serving eight years in a young offenders’ institution, was caged for an additional two years and 11 months.
Judge Jacqueline Beech said: ‘You show no regard for society or the due processes of society and to commit this robbery while on bail and while standing trial for a cash in transit robbery is breathtaking in its audacity.’
Mulwinda, Brooks, Nathan Misambu, 19, and two boys, aged just 14 and 15 at the time, targeted a lone guard outside Alliance & Leicester in Ilford Hill on March 12 last year.
Brooks and Mulwinda recruited the boys – one of whom was on the books of a Guinness Premiership rugby club – for their ‘athleticism’, the court heard.
The young sportsman used his prowess to ‘rugby-tackle’ the custodian who severely injured his knee and cracked his helmet against a concrete pillar.
The guard, who is in his 30s, said he had been robbed more than 20 times and wanted to quit but continued in his ‘very dangerous’ job to support his family through the recession.
Mulwinda and his gang made off with the cash but were already under surveillance by a crack team of Flying Squad officers who immediately swooped.
‘The guard’s statement read: ‘The people who did this are low life, they have acted like vultures and see me as an easy target.’
Brooks was jailed last month for two and a half years while Misambu, who was convicted after a trial, was handed a five-year prison term.
The youngest defendant, now aged 15, was sentenced to two and a half years in a youth detention centre, while the promising rugby prospect – a head boy at his school – received one year and eight months.
Mulwinda was jailed for six years in May 2009 for his involvement in the snatching of an £8,200 cash box nine months earlier.
The thug received a further two years behind bars in December last year for the London Underground attacks in August 2008.
Mulwinda, of (16) Henniker Point, Leytonstone Road, Stratford, east London, Brooks, of (36) Chobham Road, Stratford, and the two boys from Barking and Dagenham, Essex, all admitted conspiracy to rob.
Misambu, of (36) Bushy Close, Romford, Essex, was convicted of conspiracy to rob after he unsuccessfully fought a jury trial.
Judge Georges Khayat QC said at an earlier hearing: ‘It is my information that drugs have been brought into this trial.
‘One day, about two weeks ago, those cleaning the dock found a quantity of cannabis that had been dropped in there.
‘There has been discussion with defendants who are in custody who have been trying to get someone who is not in custody to fetch in some drugs for them.’
ENDS