A DRUGS gang who went on a rampage of violent retribution where shotguns were blasted at four homes and a man was attacked with a machete have all been jailed.
Gang leader Scott Mizsei was at the heart of the cocaine dealing operation and was involved in three of the firearms attack which took place in one night of violence.
The 34-year-old targeted the houses in Thornaby and Stockton when he blasted a pump action shotgun at windows and doors.
Teesside Crown Court heard how there was two adults and child sleeping upstairs in the property on Victor Way, Thornaby, but the other two addresses, on Tarring Street and Stirling Way, were both empty at the time of the shootings in December 2019.
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Judge Timothy Stead branded Mizsei a ‘dangerous offender’ as he sentenced him to a total of 22 years in custody with three years on extended licence after he was found guilty of conspiracy to supply class A drugs and three charges of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
“The firearm was a 12-gauge, 12 bore, self-loading pump action shotgun, no mean weapon in everyday language,” he said. “It was used in the course of three shootings at houses within a space measured in minutes.”
The judge said the house on Tarring Street belonged to a former associate of the defendant and the attack was because of a grudge he held against his intended target.
Dealing with the dangerousness of the weapons attacks, he added: “Shots were fired at upper windows at night, in one case two adults and child were asleep in the house.”
Mizsei, of Lime Trees Close, Port Clarence, Middlesbrough, was found guilty following a trial.
Four of his co-defendants were later involved in another shooting incident when a shotgun was blasted at a house in Hemlington, Middlesbrough, in March 2020.
The attack was in retaliation for an assault on Sidney Bashford’s mother and his sister’s house.
Bashford, Oliver Connelly, Kyle Hamilton and Cory Mosley, were among a gang of people who turned up mobhanded at the address in a car and on a quad bike for the ‘revenge attack’ with a display of force with three people going towards the property.
The judge said: “Such was the manner of the approach, combined with the manner of attack, using a shotgun which was fired, this was clearly designed to maximise fear and distress.
“There was a strong element of display about what went on. It appears that more than one shot was fired but mercifully no one was injured.”
Bashford, 25, of Raydale, Hemlington, was sentenced to four years for conspiracy to possess a firearm with intent to cause fear or alarm after pleading guilty.
Connelly, 24, of Eastcroft Road, Middlesbrough, was jailed for four years for the same offence and a further six months for a drugs offence after pleading guilty to both charges.
Hamilton, 24, of Limetrees Close, Middlesbrough, was sentenced to six years after being found guilty of the same weapons charge.
And 19-year-old Mosley, of Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough, was sentenced to a total of six years and six months for the weapons charge and unlawful wounding.
The court heard how he also lost a leg at the time of the shooting incident.
Dealing with the unlawful wounding charge, Judge Stead said: “Three of them had between them, a large machete and a meat cleaver, Mosley got on top of the victim on the bed, pinning him down and screaming in his face ‘take you clothes off, do as I say, do it now or I will slit your f***ing face off’.
“To say he was threatening is to understate matters.”
The court heard how the man was then punched several times before being ‘hacked’ at with the machete and the meat cleaver.
The final defendant was a grandmother who was jailed for three years for her role in a conspiracy to supply cocaine after being found guilty at trial.
Diane Brown, of Longbeck Way, Thornaby, allowed her house to be used as a ‘warehouse’ to store and prepare drug deals in July last year.
When police raided the 53-year-old’s property £52,000 worth of the Class A drug hidden in her loft and she was connected with the purchase of paraphernalia connected with drug dealing, including cutting agents and plastic bags.
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