Firearm charges admitted (From The Northern Echo)

Firearm charges admitted

8:00am Thursday 9th February 2012 in Crime News By Bruce Unwin, Chief Reporter (Durham)

A MAN has admitted firearms offences arising from the police discovery of several illegally held weapons.

Glen Graham pleaded guilty to six of nine charges during a hearing at Durham Crown Court yesterday.

The 38-year-old mechanic, from Consett, was one of three men arrested by police in early morning raids in north-west Durham in October last year.

It led to the recovery of weapons and adapted firearms at premises in Stanley, Shotley Bridge and at a former fire station in Delves Lane, Consett, which was converted to a vehicle salvage yard in 1998.

The raids followed an incident in which three police community support officers were threatened with a handgun produced by one of two masked men they approached in a field in Tanfield Village, near Stanley, in May last year.

They were warned to get back before the men got into a car and sped away from the scene.

No shots were fired and no one was injured.

Graham, of Horton Close, Delves Lane, who has been in custody for several months, admitted converting an imitation firearm and transferring a prohibited firearm, in both cases a pump-action shotgun, possessing a firearms round without a certificate and three counts relating to possession of a prohibited firearm and components, including a barrel from a bolt-action rifle and a breech block trigger mechanism.

He denied possessing expanding bullet head ammunition, possessing a prohibited firearm, a .22 RimFire pen gun disguised as a nut and bolt, and attempting to convert an imitation firearm, a deactivated 9mm self-loading Russian pistol.

Shaun Dryden, prosecuting, said that over the coming weeks, the Crown will consider if those pleas are acceptable or if prosecutors want to proceed to a trial on the charges denied.

Recorder Jonathan Aitken adjourned the case until February 29 and remanded Graham in custody.