foreign [Music] [Applause] foreign Staples had much in common though not friends they crossed paths amicably in their home City Beau shared a passion for football both were fathers of two young children and according to those close to them both were rarely without a smile on the 25th of May 2009 these two young men from Nottingham were 5 300 miles apart but both were about to make fatal decisions that would lead to the same tragic destination 27 year old Mr Langton known as nard was cheeky an outgoing young man who made his money as a medium-level drug dealer mainly running a string of houses producing hydroponically grown cannabis originally from the city of Liverpool he made his way to Nottingham living in Lenton and the borewell areas of the city he had a partner and a dean and two young children he had been in trouble with the law in July 2004 serving four months in prison after running down and killing 59 year old pedestrian Kevin Kent Omni Yamaha motorbike and fleeing the scene he eventually handed himself in when his conscience got the bearer of him Mr Langton enjoyed clubland to the full and it was no surprise for any early hours of the hot bank holiday weekend he decided to visit a newly opened venue in the city’s lace Market called Paris formerly known as Geisha to finish off what had been a banging night out it was about 1 45 am in Nottingham and the neon lit Street still held an abundance of promise for young Club lovers who knew there was no work to get up for on Monday morning some of Mr langton’s companions mentioned that Paris might be full of people but they had an ongoing beef with nard Shrugged he was up for a good night out not trouble he had his knife on him just in case he walked in nodding to the doorman they didn’t dare search him on the other side of the world in the quiet Costa Rican coastal town of talamanca it was 6 45 PM 19 year old Reece Staples nicknamed doubler had ditched a promising football career in Nottingham now he was thousands of moles from home and planning to make a purchase of high-grade crack cocaine he had told friends he was taking his girlfriend Kylie on a Caribbean holiday where he was here to make a deal he would buy enough crack that once it was cut for sale would bring in around 27 000 pounds it still had to be transported back to the UK but Rhys knew what had to be done it had all been planned before he had set foot in Costa Rica although he would not be the primary recipient of any profits others who had brought the plane tickets for him we’ll see to that and keep the walls from the door sure the pressure pulsated through his body and his heart beat faster when he thought about what he was doing but that was all part of the game besides he trickled to himself when he was done he could dine out for weeks telling his friends about the smuggling vacation Adventures back at the Paris nightclub nard was clocked by a number of people as he walked in many hollered to him but there were others lurking who had a history of Mr Langton and his friends it went back to an incident several years earlier when a friend of Mr langtons had been shot in the back near the city’s Showcase Cinema one of those who had a beef with him Alex James now pushed his way through the teaming club without warning Mr James struck Mr Langton over the head with a champagne bottle Mr Langton reacted instinctively pulling out his knife and stabbing Mr James in the leg someone close by then whipped out a handgun and fired off two shots people screamed get down somebody’s got a gun friends of Mr James seeing the blood running from his leg wound and hearing the gun discharge before he had been shot even as the people began running from the upstairs bar downstairs onto the street and I’m police Response Unit was being sent to the scene among the crowd was 34 year old Dion Griffin a bragger who was saturated himself in the gangster life for two decades Mr Griffin was a mid-level drug dealer always looking to step up and leave his Mark he had been convicted previously in operation opal which focused on dealers being used by The Vessel cartel and had also been suspected of ordering a number of shootings in the past in one case a 27 year old man from The Apple Tree area a displeased Mr Griffin and was kidnapped outside the Lord Nelson Pub the victim was beaten and tortured for three hours and then whilst pleading for his life was shot several times and left for dead on Moore Road The Man Who police say was very very looking to be alive managed to crawl to a telephone box and dial 999 when Medics arrived they were kept back for several minutes whilst arm officers quizzed the victim about who carried out the shooting such was their belief that he would not survive whilst there was little doubt that Mr Griffin had ordered to kidnap and the shooting he had distanced himself enough to avoid being charged now in the early hours of May the 25th Mr Griffin cemented his notoriety he summoned Anthony Tony tirado his personal enforcer Mr terado was armed of a hang and pulled out a pair of black gloves together they went searching for burning Langton working their way through the Paris Club as people Spilled Out onto the street Mr Griffin Mr terado an associate from Birmingham went outside and spotted Mr Langton with blood streaming from his head wound walking then trotting down the street still thinking Mr Langton might be armed Mr terado hid behind the pillar then walked out onto the street again as Mr Griffin ordered him to take him down from 20 meters the sound of four gun shops erupted and Mr Langton was hit twice in the bat as he fled down Pilcher gate he staggered before tumbling down a state of stairs near the picture and piano Pub and the Living Room restaurant Mr Griffin and his cohorts fled armed police and ambulances already summoned to Paris arrived to find that stabbing victim Alex James had been put in the car by his friends arriving at the Queen’s Medical Center at 2 18 am Mr Griffin Mr terado and others in another car made their way to the hospital to check on the condition of Mr James arriving at 2 22 am but in the city center paramedics arriving at the lace Market were not given immediate access to Mr lamington because the incident was still considered live and no one knew if the gunman was still around by 2 35 am Mr Langton was finally on his way to the qmc already unconscious its ambulance drove to the accident and emergency Bay of the hospital at 2 45 AM followed by a police van only to be met by a distinctly unwelcoming crew led by Mr Griffin they were intent on preventing the young man getting into the hospital for treatment even as Mr Langton was taking his last breaths Mr Griffin stood at the center of the group screaming at the paramedic and the security staff at the hospital I hope you’re dead if he comes out we’ll finish him off he’s gonna die he’s not coming in here eight minutes elapsed before staff could get Mr Langton into the hospital but by then it was too late he was officially declared dead just before 3am in Costa Rica three staples was having problems confirming his flight to the UK he was also trying to judge the right time to swallow the crack cocaine he and Kylie had brought when the couple eventually arrived back at Luton Airport on June 5th they were greeted at the airport by a man who had sent them on their mission Stanley Leach a Jamaican national living on the broxto estate Mr leech was married but was having an affair with Kylie and clearly had some kind of hold over her to demand that the pair become drug mules for him Rhys insisted that he take the risks and swallow all the drugs himself the 22 pellets of crack had been secured and cut off fingers of latex gloves which were then sealed with white and wrapped in cling film The disruptive stages of the flight back to the UK meant that Rhys had to re-swallow some of the packages he had swallowed 25 hours earlier but nevertheless he and Kylie walked unhindered through the Customs at Luton Airport Reese was able to give Mr leech three of the cocaine packets he had excreted but constipating agents he had taken to make sure that drugs did not pass through his body too quickly meant that a further 19 packets remained inside him the day after arriving back Reese was on the streets around Radford and basford on his own turf he didn’t feel very well he told Kylie he suspected some of the drugs were now leaking into his body and said that he thought he might be dying desperation began to boil over him and in the early hours of June the 7th he was picked up by a routine police patrol in the basford area of Suspicion of causing criminal damage to a car at 1 15 am he was arrested and taken to Ox close lane police station where he was placed in a Cell what took place during the next three hours is still not clear but at 5am officers in the custody Suite area were alerted that their prisoner was suffering some sort of seizure in his cell like Bernard Langdon Reef Staples died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital Nottinghamshire police in line with policy of deaths in custody immediately called the independent police complaints commission to investigate whether any of their officers had failed in their duties the outpouring of grief among those who had known Rhys was overwhelming more than 4 000 people signed up to a Facebook page in tribute to him and hundreds attended his funeral many wearing t-shirts in blaze of his smiling face few could understand what had led a 19 year old away from his path as a promising young footballer to become a drug mule unfortunately part of the answer was there in the double lives being led by many young people in a deprived inner cities the aspiration these youngsters had set themselves were often so unrealistically high a lucrative career in football music and modeling that when these dreams were dashed away they saw few options other than becoming a drug dealer or living a gang life three Staples at first come to prominence in 2004 when as a 15 year old from the city’s Trinity School he played for Nottingham Forest under 16s and then signed for their Rivals not County it wasn’t long before Premiership clubs lined up at the Meadow Lane to secure the signature of the surging goal scoring midfielder he was potentially the best thing to come out of the club since Jermaine pennant who went on to play for Arsenal Leeds United and Liverpool Manchester United who had been on the receiving end of Reese’s talents when he was with Nottingham Forest won the race to sign him ahead of Aston Villa and Blackburn Rovers after he was impressed on a trial but things did not work out at Old Trafford and less than a year later Reese was on his way back to Nottingham he returned to the forest Youth Academy and was given the number 34 shirt of the full Squad by 2006 he seen back on track with the forest youth team regularly turning up for key performances which helped taking through to the fifth round of the FAA young cook and during the 2007 and 2008 season to a 15 match unbeaten run but it appeared he had two personalities there was Rhys the promising young footballer and then the Radford gang member wearing his black bandana and drinking brandy in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2007 at doubler he was involved in a mass Foy at a private party at the Variety Club in Radford three people including Rhys suffered serious stab wounds he was rushed to the qmc by friends who acted quickly enough to save his life the violence he suffered that night seemed to sap his self-confidence he continued with Nottingham Forest throughout 2007 and 2008 but his head was somewhere else in October 2008 he was released by them and snapped up by a town league team Carlton FC away from the pressure of professional football Reese’s confidence and passion for the game returned but he could not stop doubler dragging him back into the Gully life that cracked in the streets around him it was no different for Bernard Langton both were victims of a lifestyle which if they had the strength of mine they would surely have wished to escape instead they were alert to their end body intoxicating draw of another life gambling on the promise of street credibility and Financial Security both men would be remembered by those closest but as smiles and the brightness they beamed into others in their short lives but there was also the terrible Legacy of sadness they left that of unfulfilled hopes and not least the unfortunate situation that two sets of children would now have to grow up not knowing their dads in May 2010 the individuals identified by the police as playing part in pulling re-staples back into the ghetto were jailed at Nottingham Crown Court Stanley Leach 38 was sentenced to five years of free month for conspiring to import and Supply crack cocaine Kylie Hodgson 24 who had a child boy Reese was sentenced to three years after admitting to importing the drug which police estimated would have been worth up to 27 000 pounds the 134 grams of high grade Coke that made up the shipment was not a large amount a mayor just been in a test room in preparation for regular excursions the authorities seem to be perplexed as anyone about why Mr Staples chose drugs over football judge milman QC said it’s impossible to work out why a lad of 19 who spent time with Nottingham Forest Academy got involved to put it bluntly in drug smuggling Bernard langdon’s death was the first gun fatality in shottingham in three years since the killing of 17 year old Nathan Williams in September 2006. drug dealer Courtney hunt h21 was later jailed for life for shooting Mr Williams through the heart in the Meadows Bridgeway shopping Precinct after a teenager had taunted him for being fat the introduction of airport-stalled scanners at the entrant to some of the city’s clubs offered reassurance to some but there were criticism from the owners that it had been put there to put people coming off coming to their Club the fact was that gang members were increasingly treating clubs as their own officers and extended cribs Quest questions were rightly being asked about how two people have managed to enter the clubs that night carrying firearms one clubs played by gun problems on the outskirt of the city had its license revoked after testimony from the police that the licensee had been cleaning up evidence after one particular clash in which a car was shot up it did not take police long to arrest those responsible for Bernard langdon’s death thanks largely to the CCTV footage from the outside of Queen’s Medical Center and around the lace Market which had caught the flashes of the gun being fired eight people including Dion Griffin and Anthony tradado were arrested their trial got underway at Birmingham Crown Court on May 2010 with experienced QC Peter Joyce leading the prosecution the full scale of the terror visited upon Nottingham that evening emerged in what was described by the judge as something akin to the wild west one of the four shots fired by Mr tradado had gone through the window of a book hitting the Optics behind the bar it was only by look that no passing revelers were gunned down that night the court heard how Mr Griffin had a hold over Mr tradado appealing to the younger man’s perverse Ambitions to become a fully fledged gangster Mr Griffin’s word was Lord to Mr tridado who was more than happy to carry out the demands of his ego-fueled boss the evening after the shooting the two of them had fled to skegness where Mr Griffin like Colin Gunn kept the Caravan for holding up after a couple of days Mr terado was feeling the heat not least because skagness was full of people from Nottingham he sent Mr Griffin a text saying ask what time I’m getting off it’s flaming here Mr Griffin replied with a calculated coldness of a man who had been there before no drama he texted Mr terrado just chill no more text shortly after a third man Andrew pleasance age 39 organized a hundred pounds for a taxi for Mr terado to disappear down to Gloucester where he intended to hide out despite jumping more than 10 mobile phones they had used before and after the murder the three were convicted on the basis of CCTV footage and the ability of the police to forensically back the signal movements through mobile phone mass and calls made between the missing phones after a trial lasting more than six weeks the jewelry found Mr Griffin and Mr tirado who both lived in the top Valley area guilty of murder Mr Pleasants was found guilty of assisting an offender and was sentenced to four years the jury failed to reach a verdict on the third man from Birmingham who was accused of murder sentencing Mr Griffin and Mr tirado to life with a minimum of 28 years each Mrs Justice sharp set the scenes at the hospital were utterly disgraceful she added this was nothing less than a cold-blooded execution motivated by Revenge innocent passer boys could easily have been struck by a stray bullet and the public could have been caught up by something that resembled something from the wild west after the case Mr Landon’s mother could Dina record upon her son’s good nature I really miss his cheeky smile she said he was always laughing and had a very bubbly character he liked to make all of us laugh and was a brilliant dad his daughter was only one when he died he would always be spending time with his son going to the park and taking him to the cinema it’s hard to believe he’s gone and they will have to grow up without him people who did this have taken away my son from me and ruined my life everyone needs to wake up and know what’s going on around him and to understand gun crime devastates families

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