Man gets life for garden shed gun factory

LONDON (Reuters) - A gunsmith who converted replica weapons into live sub-machine guns that were used in a wave of shootings and murders was jailed for at least 11 years on Thursday.

Grant Wilkinson, 34, modified the weapons in a garden shed in Berkshire before they were sold on to criminal gangs.

One of them, a Mac-10 sub-machine gun, was used during a robbery in Bradford in 2005 which led to the death of Pc Sharon Beshenivsky, although it was not the murder weapon.

Another was used to shoot dead Michael Dosunmu, 15, who was killed in his bed in Peckham, southeast London, in 2007.

The Mac-10, which can fire 1,200 rounds a minute, is a favourite of Yardie-style gangsters and is nicknamed the "spray and pray" because of the difficulty in controlling its firing.

Wilkinson bought blank-firing replica guns on the pretence they were to be used in a James Bond film, Reading Crown Court heard. He then converted them in a building at Three Mile Cross in Berkshire before selling them.

Police have offered a reward of up to 10,000 pounds for any information leading to the recovery of 40 Mac-10s or the arrest of those involved in offences where the weapons have been used.

The guns were part of a batch of 90 sold by a company, Sabre Defence, to Wilkinson, who called himself Gary Wilson. Fifty of the guns have been recovered.

Claudia Webbe, chair of the Trident Independent Advisory Group, said in a statement: "Here we have an armoury factory in the suburbs of Berkshire creating deadly weapons that are clearly ending up in the hands of 17, 18, 19-year-olds, in inner city urban London.