£54m Securitas robber shot in neck at home - court

Photo from 2009 of cagefighter Paul Allen, who was jailed for 18 years for his part in Britain's largest ever cash robbery

A former cagefighter convicted of Britain's largest cash robbery was shot in the neck in his kitchen in east London following his release from jail, a court has heard.

Paul Allen, then 41, was paralysed for life after shots were fired at his home in Woodford Green in 2019.

A jury at the Old Bailey was told the intention was to kill him, and the attackers "very nearly succeeded".

Louis Ahearne, 36, his brother Stewart Ahearne, 46, and Daniel Kelly, 46, are accused of plotting to murder him with others unknown. They deny the allegations.

'Paralysed for life'

Opening their trial on Wednesday, prosecutor Michael Shaw said: "On July 11 2019, just after 11.09pm, gunshots were fired from a self-loading Glock 9mm handgun.

"The intention of the men who planned and carried out that shooting of Paul Allen on July 11 was to kill him.

"They very nearly succeeded. At least six bullets were fired at him from that Glock handgun, two of which struck him.

"One hit him in the centre of the throat and left him paralysed for life.

The gunshots that night were heard "pretty much all over Woodford" and police received a number of emergency calls, jurors heard.

Mr Allen's next-door neighbours heard the loud bangs and the victim's partner, Jade Bovingdon, screaming: "He's been shot. He's been shot."

'Britain's biggest armed robbery'

They dashed over and found Ms Bovingdon screaming for an ambulance and Mr Allen slumped in the hallway with a towel pressed to his neck and struggling to breathe, the court heard.

His little finger had been "virtually amputated" by one of the bullets, Mr Shaw said.

Other neighbours saw between one and three figures running away and getting into the "mission car" – a hired Renault Captur – that made off at speed, the court was told.

Jurors heard that scenes of crime officers were deployed to the property soon after the shooting and recovered five shell casings close to a summer house.

Swabs were taken from a nearby fence panel and DNA was matched to Kelly and Louis Ahearne, jurors were told.

The prosecutor said the background to the shooting was that Mr Allen is a career criminal and "a very sophisticated criminal at that".

He told jurors: "He was convicted a number of years ago at Woolwich Crown Court for his part in what was then – and still is – Britain's biggest armed robbery, at Securitas Express in Kent, in which £54 million in cash was stolen, much of which is outstanding.

"By 2019, he had been released from prison and moved from south London to a large detached property in Woodford, north-east London, where he lived with his partner and young children."

Reconnaissance

The defendants travelled from their home in the Woolwich area of south-east London, through the Blackwall Tunnel to the victim's new home in Malvern Drive as part of the planning and execution of the conspiracy, jurors were told.

Mr Shaw told the jury they were "not going on a picnic" as they scouted the scene around the address, including on the morning of the shooting.

As part of the sophisticated planning of the attack, unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile phones were used to communicate, and vehicles were hired, the court heard.

The Renault Captur was hired by Stewart Ahearne from a dealership in Dartford and used by the other two defendants in a burglary in a gated community in Kent the day before the shooting, it was alleged.

Jurors heard that CCTV cameras on a house next to the scene of the shooting captured "significant" events that night as well as Kelly allegedly carrying out reconnaissance in a Mercedes car on the previous morning and on earlier dates.

Louis Ahearne, from Greenwich, south-east London, and Stewart Ahearne and Kelly, both of no fixed address, have denied conspiring to murder Mr Allen between June 26 and July 12 2019.