Kemp Town shooter and his teenage gunsmith girlfriend jailed

A gunman who shot at a man in Kemp Town last year and his teenage gunsmith girlfriend have been jailed for a total of more than 13 years.

Kai Palmer, 22, used a converted antique pistol loaded with ammo made by Savanna Harby, 19, to shoot an an unnamed man in Rock Place last October.

Harby had supplied bullets she had forged herself using sand moulds and molten lead.

Fortunately for the target, her handiwork was faulty and the gun backfired, and the pair were chased away by the victim, who charged at them with a traffic cone.

The police investigation closed St James’s Street for more than 24 hours. The gun and ammunition were found stashed on the roof outside Harby’s room at the Gulliver Hotel in New Steine four days later and Harby and Palmer were arrested about two weeks after the attack.

At Hove Crown Court last Thursday, August 19, Palmer was sent to prison for eight and a half years and Harby for five years.

Sentencing, Recorder Sarah Elliott said: “Kai Palmer, you shot a man in public in the street, using a gun with bullets that you, Savanna Harby, had also been in possession of.

It’s sheer chance that someone wasn’t killed or hurt. It was a truly shocking thing to happen in daytime in a residential area of Brighton.

“The motive remains unclear but appears to be a dispute over drugs.

“What is clear, thanks to the CCTV footage, is the speed at which you produced the gun and fired it at your intended victim.”

Prosecuting, Richard Hearnden showed the court CCTV footage, in which a puff of smoke was visible as the gun backfired.

He said: “Nobody was hurt and you will see that the other man, who had picked up a traffic cone before the shot was fired, then run towards them. Kai Palmer runs away and caught up with Savanna Harby and they ran away together.

“If it wasn’t so serious, it might have been funny – chased by the man holding the traffic cone.”

He said that at interview, Kai Palmer had said Harby didn’t know anything about it, and that he had been defending himself from the other man who had made threats to stab him and reached into his waistband for a knife.

But Harby had told police an “incredible” tale of how she had converted the gun and forged the bullets.

Her trial in June was shown footage of the teenager, who had since died her hair pink, laughing and joking with police officers as she described melting the lead and pouring it into moulds made of damp sand, and drilling into shotgun cartridges to get gunpowder.

But when police later found tools used to make homemade bullets, her DNA was found on it, making her self-incriminating account seem more credible.

During that interview, she also described how she had converted the American Colt New Line dating from about 1885, which she said she had bought for her dad’s birthday from a shop in the Lanes for about £250.

She later told the jury she had been lying to police in order to take the blame for her boyfriend, and that the DNA had come from the bags the ammunition was kept in, which she had previously used to do her laundry.

However, the jury found her guilty of the charge of possessing ammunition – while clearing her of the more serious charge of possessing the gun with intent to endanger life and another of possessing cannabis.

Palmer pleaded guilty to the same charge in May, a few days before their trial was due to start in June, having already pleaded guilty to possessing another imitation firearm during the same incident, the ammunition and cannabis and another related firearms offence at an earlier hearing.

Defending for Kai Palmer, Stefan Kolodynski said the 22-year-old British national was born in India, and had returned to the UK with a “completely dysfunctional and dangerous lifestyle” which had seen him quickly drawn into the drug scene.
He said Palmer had been told to courier the weapons on behalf of a gang, and repeated his claims that the other man had been reaching for a knife after threatening to stab him when he fired the gun.

Defending Harby, John Harrison said she had a deeply traumatic childhood and had been severely neglected by her drug addict mother.

And he argued that Harby had played a secondary role in producing the ammunition.

He said: “She’s clearly a young lady who needs intervention in respect of her life and needs to be provided and equipped with strategies and frameworks going forward that will prevent her from finding herself effectively homeless and fending for herself in a hotel in Brighton again.”

Harby’s brother Lewes Harby was jailed for 18 years in October 2017 for raping six young girls, one who was only 12 years old, at his mother Anthea Dickson’s house in Brighton.