TWO men who stole three tankers worth more than £300,000 from an Ellesmere Port industrial estate have been jailed.
Timothy Edwards, 53, a farmer from Tarleton, Lancashire, and taxi driver John Downes, 23, of Lydiate, Liverpool, stole three Scania tanker lorries from an industrial unit on North Road, Ellesmere Port, overnight on May 3.
Each vehicle, which had been loaded with £45,000 worth of diesel and was bound for various locations in the UK, had been safely parked and secured.
But later that night, grainy CCTV images showed three males forcing entry to the compound then, minutes later, driving away the tanker.
Prosecutor Andrew Green told Chester Crown Court that just hours later police managed to trace two of the trailers to Edwards’s farm near Ormskirk, where officers said he gave a ‘theatrical and exaggerated’ performance, insisting he had been watching television all night.
He was subsequently arrested and two missing cabs from both trailers were found abandoned in Widnes.
The court also heard police traced Downes’s connection to the case through mobile phone records that pinpointed his whereabouts at the time of the theft.
But defending farmer Edwards, who also operates a caravan storage business, barrister John Bromley-Davenport said, though his client had been ‘foolish’, it was the first time in his life he had done anything dishonest.
“His knowledge of the case was at a very low level, he was simply asked to make space available for the tankers at his farm in exchange for an unspecified reward,” he said. “That is the full extent of his involvement.”
Tony O’Donoghue, defending Downes, said he was recruited as ‘an escort’ and said: “John Downes acted out of character here; vast profits could have been obtained but they were not heading toward him.”
But sentencing Edwards to 16 months imprisonment and Downes to 18 months, in light of his late plea, judge Ian Trigger said they played significant roles in the crime.
