180mph getaway driver used stolen £85,000 Audi
Getaway driver Ben Westwood used a stolen £85,000 Audi – one of only two in the country – to keep out of the reach of the law during his five-month crime spree.
Getaway driver Ben Westwood used a stolen £85,000 Audi – one of only two in the country – to keep out of the reach of the law during his five-month crime spree.
The startling acceleration of the specially modified Audi RS5 allowed him to repeatedly escape from pursing police cars while committing more than a dozen raids – including one at a Tesco in Cannock – that netted more than £60,000 worth of cigarettes plus cash and jewellery.
Click on the image on the right to see the other members of the gang
He was going so fast on the M6 trying to flee from a bungled raid on a cash machine in Penn, Wolverhampton, that flames appeared to be shooting from the rear of the vehicle.
But the heat was soon on Westwood after detectives uncovered a tell-tale pattern of crime across the Midlands.
Officers combing CCTV footage from a string of similar raids committed in Staffordshire and the West Midlands spotted a white Audi with distinctive grille and sports wheels in the vicinity of all the crimes while displaying different false number plates.
The luxury saloon matched a vehicle stolen in a car key burglary in Stourport on August 3, 2011. The missing Audi had a Lamborghini engine, special panoramic glass roof and racing car brakes.
Among the offences it was linked to was a raid on a Tesco in Heath Hayes, Cannock, in the early hours of September 22, 2011. The hood of a member of the masked gang snagged on a shattered rollershutter as they loaded stolen cigarettes into black dustbins used to carry away the haul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmNSZWZJZLY
He looked like Westwood, who had already been identified by police as a possible suspect as he was out on licence from a four-and-a-half-year jail term after being convicted of involvement in a similar offences in 2007. Less than a quarter of an hour after the Heath Hayes raid, a gang struck again at the Co-op in Cannock Road, Wolverhampton, near Westwood's home.
He described himself as a car trader and lived at Woden Road, Wednesfield, and police checks proved that there had been sufficient time for the same people to be responsible for both crimes.
The tracker from the Audi, removed soon after its theft, had stopped working in the Wolverhampton area.
Police decided that these facts added to the growing suspicion that Westwood was at the centre of the crime spree which had started within hours of the Audi being taken, when the Co-op store in Holmcroft Road, Stafford, was raided and £2,500 worth of cigarettes taken.
The wave of raids continued at shops in Stoke, Cannock, Rugeley, Wednesfield, Worcester, Bentley Bridge, Walsall, Stourport and Market Drayton.
Each took little more than five minutes to complete, with the gang filling dustbins with packets of cigarettes.
It was the 65-mile police chase following the raid in Penn that led to Westwood and his gang's downfall. Police obtained the proof they needed for a prosecution when they caught Westwood minutes after he dumped the stolen Audi following that chase. The other four men in the dock with Westwood yesterday either admitted or had been found guilty of conspiracy to steal but were involved in only the Penn garage ATM attempted cash theft.
Greg Simpson, aged 41, from Wordsworth Road, The Scotlands, Wolverhampton, received a four-year jail sentence; Ramesh Sharma, 38, of Barrington Close, Oxley, got three years; Luke Watkins, 34, of Whetstone Grove, Bushbury, was sent to prison for three years and nine months, while Stephen Green, from Castlebridge Road, Wednesfield, was locked up for four years.