Robbers jailed over attack on security guard

Three men involved in robbing a security guard carrying £13,000 in cash to a Mid Wales bank have been jailed.

The trio struck outside the Barclays Bank branch at Machynlleth, Powys, in May last year.

Robert Court, 23, from Walsall, Mark Ricardo Lawlor, 27, from Solihull, and Micquel Daniel France, 25, from Birmingham, had all admitted being involved in the raid.

At Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court on Friday, France and Lawlor were deemed to be dangerous offenders and given indeterminate sentences by Judge Mark Eades.

The court heard that France had received a 12-year sentence for attempted murder in 2006, and was on day release from Sudbury prison when the robbery took place.

At the time Lawlor was on licence from an 11-year sentence imposed in 2004 for robbery and possession of a firearm in an attack on a security guard outside a West Midlands supermarket.

Mr Paul Spratt, prosecuting, said on the day of the Powys raid France was collected from the prison and he and Lawlor robbed the guard at the bank after pushing him to the floor.

He said Court had acted as the getaway driver.

France and Lawlor were arrested a short time later in the Welshpool area, and the money was recovered. Court was arrested at a later date.

Judge Eades jailed Court for a total of seven years and four months. Court had also admitted being involved in a similar robbery when £14,000 was stolen from a security guard in a raid at the Tesco supermarket in Trent Vale, Stoke-on-Trent, in March last year.

His accomplices in that robbery, Darren Duggan, 25, from Birmingham, was jailed for four years and eight months, and Warren Jackson, 36, also from Birmingham, was sentenced to seven years.