Three bungling kidnappers have been jailed for snatching a man from the street and wounding him in what a court was told may have been a dispute about drugs.
Adam Maxwell, Adam Powney and Regan White kidnapped 28-year-old Adam Scoble in broad daylight in The Avenue, in Brighton, in January last year.
The three men attacked him, hitting him with a brick in front of witnesses and in view of security cameras, and bundled him into a black Audi.
Judge Anne Arnold said that they threatened to cut Mr Scoble’s arteries and watch him bleed to death.
She said that they also threatened to douse him with the contents of a bottle of Lucozade which Mr Scoble said that he feared was a corrosive substance.
The judge said: “Adam Scoble was bundled into the back of an Audi, driven around in what he said was a frightening manner and then dropped off at his mother’s house.
“Mr Scoble described the events as the most horrific that he had experienced in his life.”
A jury convicted the three men of kidnap and wounding with intent at Brighton Crown Court last Friday (5 February) at the end of a two-week trial.
They were cleared of having a knife although Mr Scoble said that they had one.
At Hove Crown Court this afternoon (Friday 12 February), Julian Winship accepted that it was not proved that the reason for the three men forcing Mr Scoble into a car was drug-related.
But, given the evidence and the “county lines” drugs backdrop, it seemed the most likely explanation.
Powney, 34, formerly of Lewes Crescent, Brighton, was jailed for five years for kidnap and a year, to run concurrently, for wounding. He was ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £181.
Maxwell, 20, of Curlender Close, Birkenhead, and formerly of Lewes Crescent, Brighton, was jailed for four years for kidnap and a year to be served concurrently for wounding.
Separately, Maxwell admitted dealing crack cocaine and heroin on another occasion and was jailed for three years and nine months, to run consecutively.
He also admitted having crack cocaine on another occasion – and trying to swallow the drugs when he was caught by the police on Brighton seafront.
He was jailed for six months, to run concurrently, making a sentence of seven years and nine months in total. He is already in Elmley young offender institution, in Kent.
Maxwell, said by the judge to have played “a significant role” in a drug dealing set up, appeared to be known as Greg or Scouse Greg to a number of drug users.
He was ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £181 and to forfeit £51 cash and the judge made a forfeiture and destruction order in relation to his drug dealing “burner” phones.
Judge Arnold said that Maxwell had “an unattractive criminal record”.
Regan White, 18, of Firle Road, Brighton, was jailed for three years and nine months for kidnap and a year to be served concurrently for wounding in a young offender institution. He was ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £32.
The victim, Adam Scoble, 28, was sentenced in October 2019 for having drugs himself as well as having a stun gun or taser.
Scoble, who was then living in Hangleton Gardens, Hove, admitted both charges and was ordered to undergo nine months of treatment for drug dependency and placed under curfew.
Sussex Police issued a public appeal for help finding Mr Scoble during the trial after he couldn’t be found.
The judge criticised the “witness care” shown to Mr Scoble and the “lamentable delays” in bringing charges and asked for a formal explanation to be given.
