Bristol Crown Court Sentencing Results

Heidi Bessant worked as an OSG at HMP Leyhill open prison and began an inappropriate relationship with a male prisoner in November 2023. The prisoner was serving time for conspiracy to supply class A drugs and blackmail. The relationship continued until June 2024, with the pair exchanging phone calls and text messages, meeting at hotels and restaurants while the prisoner was on day release, and Bessant facilitating money being deposited into the prisoner's prison bank account. The South West Regional Organised Crime Unit investigated the matter.

Seal, of Frome, travelled in a Citroen to a car park in the centre of Radstock ahead of Delbono and Ephgrave. After Delbono stabbed the 16-year-old victim in The Street on Sunday, July 31, 2022, they fled the scene in the same two vehicles. They stopped at various points where they learned the victim had died before heading to Shearwater Lake, near Warminster. Delbono admitted during his trial that he threw the knife he used to murder the victim into the lake.

Dennis Early, 48, purchased a converted pistol, seven blank-firing firearms and six unfired bullets online from a seller in Spain. The weapons were deemed readily convertible. Officers from the National Crime Agency raided his home in Westfield, East Sussex, in February 2022 and recovered the items from his hallway, living room and garden workshop. He did not have the appropriate authority to possess such firearms.

Dominic Seymour engaged in online communication with a person he believed to be a 13-year-old girl, sharing indecent photos and attempting to arrange a meeting for sexual activity. The 'girl' was actually an undercover police officer working as part of a sting operation in Bath. He was convicted at Bristol Crown Court in April after the officer travelled to give evidence, and the judge praised the officer's hard-hitting work.

Faisal Uriakhail, along with Hamza Mahmoud and Zaeden Perkins, stabbed a man in a frenzied and sustained three-on-one attack in broad daylight just before 3.30pm on February 18, 2023, in a park between Baldwin Road and Monmouth Road, Halcon, Taunton. The victim's injuries were not life-threatening. Police and ambulance crews attended the scene in the residential area.

David Jowitt used online messaging platforms to groom profiles he believed belonged to children, including a person he believed was a 12-year-old girl, and travelled to Bristol expecting to meet a child. The profiles were operated by undercover police. Officers found he was also grooming other child profiles and had Category A child abuse images on his devices.

Alfie Cook, driving a BMW, and another driver, driving a Ford Fiesta, were racing each other at high speed on the A36 Warminster Road at Claverton, near Bradford on Avon, on April 15, 2023, causing a four-car crash that killed 26-year-old victim and seriously injured others.

Anthony Nowogrodzki, a senior Crown prosecutor with over 30 years’ experience as a criminal defence solicitor, was convicted of child cruelty and assault by beating. The offences involved violence against a child on more than one occasion. He was sentenced at Bristol Crown Court in July 2024 to concurrent terms of 14 months’ imprisonment for child cruelty and three months for assault by beating.

Benjamin John Semple, a 46-year-old former girls' rugby coach and electrical engineer from Lawrence Weston Road, was alone with a 15-year-old girl when he groped her and tried to get her to touch him improperly. The complainant suffered nightmares as a result of the abuse. Semple, a father-of-three, was convicted after a jury trial.

Patrick James was convicted of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm after a blue Honda Accord mounted a pavement and struck an NHS worker walking home during the early COVID-19 pandemic. The victim suffered a broken leg, nose and cheekbone and was left with a lifelong scar. James was also involved in a separate deliberate hit-and-run that left a cyclist with fractured ribs and a collapsed lung.

On 10 December 2023, Paul Rudkin failed to stop for police in Keymer Road, Burgess Hill, driving a blue Mini Cooper at speeds of 80mph in a 30mph zone. He overtook dangerously, narrowly avoiding head-on collisions, before losing control and crashing into a hedge. He was wanted on a warrant for failing to attend court for drug driving. He admitted dangerous driving, failing to stop, and driving without insurance.

Phillip Adams was convicted of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm after a blue Honda Accord mounted a pavement and struck an NHS worker walking home during the early COVID-19 pandemic. The victim suffered a broken leg, nose and cheekbone and was left with a lifelong scar. One attacker shouted racist abuse as they fled the scene.

In October 2020, a tractor and telehandler worth around £80,000 were stolen from a farm burglary in east Somerset. Piotr Szor, 43, from Reading, organised for the machinery to be loaded onto a lorry bound for Poland. Officers intercepted the lorry, recovered the machinery, and arrested Szor.

Mark Foley, of Cardiff, director of M E Foley (Contractors) Ltd, allowed approximately 100,000 tonnes of waste, including hazardous materials such as chopped/shredded plastics, metals, foam and other man-made materials that were carcinogenic or ecotoxic, to be illegally dumped at Stowey Quarry, a former limestone quarry near Chew Valley reservoir in Somerset, in the first nine months of 2016. The site was permitted only for clean and non-hazardous material like soil and construction waste for recovery purposes. Waste was misleadingly described as 'soil substitute'. Despite repeated warnings from the Environment Agency, illegal tipping continued. The company declared only 44,950 tonnes but actual amount was nearly 95,000 tonnes. Permit suspended in October 2016.