Gang stole £46k of vapes in warehouse raid

Mohammed Namq and Dlshad Ahmade Kalke were each jailed for 20 months suspended for 21 months

A gang narrowly missed hitting a business owner with a van while fleeing with a £46,000 haul of vapes stolen from a warehouse.

Four men broke into the storage facility in Washington, near Sunderland, to plunder electronic cigarettes in the early hours of 24 February, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

They were caught red-handed by the owners of the warehouse, one of whom had to jump out of the way as the gang drove at him in their bid to escape.

Four men from the Greater Manchester and Merseyside area, who were arrested a short while later at Thirsk in North Yorkshire, were given suspended prison sentences after admitting burglary.

The owners of the business on Swan Industrial Estate were alerted to the break in by their security company at about 04:20 GMT, prosecutor Stuart Graham said.

They rushed to the scene and found men loading boxes of vapes into one van while another was already leaving the scene.

When challenged to stop, the men fled, with one of the vans being driven directly at one of the owners who would have been "seriously injured" if he had not jumped quickly out of the way, Mr Graham said.

Carlo Ramhane and Rebvar Saghezi also got suspended sentences

In total, about £46,000 worth of stock had been stolen, with the damage caused to the building costing about £3,600, Mr Graham said.

At about 06:00, police found one of the vans, a white Vauxhall Vivaro, parked outside a coffee shop in Thirsk with the four defendants standing nearby.

Inside the van, officers found a box of vapes worth £1,600, bolt cutters and a crowbar.

The other van and its occupants has never been located.

'Not their idea'

In a statement read to the court, one of the business owners said she was "extremely anxious" about the burglars returning and she did not want to return to the site.

The defendants, who were assisted in court by a Kurdish interpreter, and their sentences were:

• Rebvar Saghezi, 29, of Ings Lane in Rochdale, jailed for 18 months suspended for 21 months with 150 hours unpaid work

• Carlo Ramhane, 23, from Ashfield Road, Rochdale, jailed for 16 months suspended for 21 months with 130 hours unpaid work

• Mohammed Namq, 26, of McCormack Avenue in St Helens, jailed for 20 months suspended for 21 months with 170 hours unpaid work

• Dlshad Ahmade Kalke, 34, of no fixed abode, jailed for 20 months suspended for 21 months with 170 hours unpaid work

The court heard Namq had been granted refugee status in the UK but Kalke did not have a "lawful status" to be in the country and was seeking asylum, so would likely be detained by the Home Office.

Recorder Nathan Moxon said he accepted other people were involved and the "enterprise" was not the idea of the four defendants, none of whom had any previous criminal convictions in the UK.