One of the architects of the Britain’s largest ever cash robbery was shot in the neck in his kitchen following his release from jail, a court has heard. Paul Allen, then 41, was paralysed for life after shots were fired at his large detached rented home in Woodford Green, east London, in 2019. The Old Bailey has been told there was a plot to kill him which “very nearly succeeded”. Allen was convicted and jailed for his part in the 2006 raid on a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent, which became known as the Brinks Mat Robbery.
A gang of men stole £54m in cash, but left behind a further £153m because it could not be fitted into their getaway vehicle. Prosecutor Michael Shaw told jurors on Wednesday that Allen is a career criminal and “a very sophisticated criminal at that” who 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.”. Three men, Louis Ahearne, 36, his brother Stewart Ahearne, 46, and Daniel Kelly, 46, are now on trial, accused of plotting Allen’s murder. “On July 11 2019, just after 11.09pm, gunshots were fired from a self-loading Glock 9mm handgun“, said Mr Shaw.
“They were fired at a man called Paul Allen as he stood in the kitchen at the back of a large detached house in Malvern Drive in Woodford, east London. “The intention of the men who planned and carried out that shooting of Paul Allen on July 11 was to kill him – you will have no doubt about that when you see the evidence in this case. “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. “It was only the rapid intervention of neighbours, police officers, paramedics, and then the skill of surgeons who were able to remove the bullet lodged in his spine, that saved his life.”. The court heard five shell casings were found by police forensic officers near to a summer house at the property. Swabs were taken from a nearby fence panel and DNA was matched to Kelly and Louis Ahearne, jurors were told.
Mr Shaw added: “The reason they hit him in the throat was they had a particularly effective sight fitted to the Glock, the sort of sight found at Daniel Kelly’s address one month later.”. The accused men are said to have travelled from their home turf 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.
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. Unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile phones were used to communicate and a vehicle was hired, the court heard. A Renault Captur was hired by Stewart Ahearne from a dealership in Dartford and used by the other two defendants in a burglary on a gated community in Kent the day before the shooting, it was alleged.
