A teenage expert in the ‘illicit art of underground gun smithery’ converted blank cartridges into real ones to fire in an antique pistol, a jury heard this week.
Savanna Harby, 19, was with Kai Palmer when he shot at an unnamed man in Rock Place in Kemp Town in October last year.
The shooting led to St James’s Street being cordoned off for more than 24 hours while forensic officers combed the scene.
Palmer and Harby were later charged with drugs and firearms offences, and Palmer pleaded guilty to all of them last autumn.
But Harby denies possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life and possessing prohibited ammunition – and yesterday, her trial began at Hove Crown Court.
Prosecuting, Richard Hearnden said: “Anyone who works on a real handgun, even an antique, with the intention that it should fire a live round, does so with the same intent: that life be put in danger.
“In this country, handguns are illegal and anyone who engages in this sort of underground work is working in a dangerous criminal cottage industry.
“Further, at the time of the shooting, Ms Harby was there, in Rock Place, with Palmer. She told the police that she took the gun off Palmer as he was being threatened by the other man. She said the other man had a bladed weapon in his hand, and was swinging it about.”
He added: “The prosecution’s case is that while Palmer was the gunman, Ms Harby was the armourer and went with him to the shooting. She is jointly liable for the intent to endanger life, just as much as Palmer.”
Palmer and Harby – who had since dyed her hair pink – were arrested at his hotel room in Kemp Town on 23 October, four days after the shooting.
Police found a silver revolver inside a plastic bag, and officers identified some work had been done to it.
A few days later, another address in Patcham was raided and police found another gun, some sand and some tools inside a red suitcase.
Police found DNA from four people on the gun, including profiles which matched Palmer and Harby.
Mr Hearnden said that at interview, Harby said she had bought the revolver, an American Colt New Line dating from about 1885, for £250 from a shop in Brighton for her father’s birthday.
She had also bought blank ammunition – ammunition which does not have as much gunpowder, and no lead bullet in its tip.
She then took gunpowder from easily available shotgun cartridges to fill up the blanks – and had forged bullets to put into the tip of the blanks using lead, a mould made from depressed sand, and a blowtorch.
On the morning of the shooting, she said she had taken it with her for protection, thinking there was a fifty-fifty chance it could fire a bullet.
When it went off, it had backfired, and she had later tried to repair it with an angle grinder.
Mr Hearnden said: “Clearly, Ms Harby was an expert in the illicit art of underground gun smithery. You may find that there is no doubt that Ms Harby was telling the truth about how she manufactured the ammunition and worked on the gun. How else could she have had all that knowledge?”
The trial continues.
