‘Shotgun terror’ for dad and son (From Daily Echo)
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Southampton Crown Court hears of ‘shotgun terror’ for dad and son in Townhill Park
12:10pm Tuesday 12th March 2013 in News
By Patrick Knox, Senior Reporter
A shotgun at the property
A FATHER and son have described how a man carrying a sawn-off shotgun approached them out of the blue and threatened to kill them and their family.
Paul and Sam Bryan were helping to shift furniture from a flat in Southampton when Charlie Rockett accosted Sam and accused him of “disrespecting him”, a court heard.
The gunman warned he would blow Sam’s head off and when his dad tried to calm him down Rockett extended his threat to the whole family.
“He made threats to all my family. Everyone was included,” Paul Bryan told Southampton Crown Court.
Paul Bryan said he asked Rockett why he needed the gun and was told it because he was a drug dealer and that he had shot someone in the knee before.
Then he said Rockett gestured out of a stairwell window to a woman with a pushchair. “He said ‘I could shoot her if I wanted. I could shoot my father’,” Paul Bryan told jurors.
“He was on something or other. I feared for my son if he got past me.” Paul Bryan said Rockett then cocked the gun to reveal an empty barrel – but produced a bag of cartridges which he placed on a bed that had been in the process of being moved down from the flat, which was the home of Sam’s brother Ben.
Police then arrived at the flat in Kingsdown Way, Townhill Park, and Paul Bryan said Rockett ran upstairs leaving the shells behind, saying he needed to hide his gun.
The court heard how Sam Bryan was hiding in the upstairs flat as Rockett came inside with the illegally held shotgun.
Sam Bryan, in his evidence, said: “There was no carpet so I could hear him moving around. I stayed in a room because he had a gun.” The court was told that Rockett then fled leaving behind the shotgun, which Sam Bryan handed to police.
Rockett, 19, of no fixed address, denies possessing a prohibited weapon and two counts of possessing the prohibited weapon with intent to cause fear of violence on October 6 last year.
Proceeding
