Video: Armed gang jailed after holding up Swiss Cottage McDonald’s
A trio of armed robbers and their lookout have been jailed for a total of more than 30 years after holding up a restaurant in Swiss Cottage.
Andrew Nkomo, from Lithos Road in Hampstead, was among the group of masked men who held staff at gun-point as they raided McDonald’s in Finchley Road. The 22-year-old and his two fellow gang members made off with �2,000 from the restaurant’s safe in a swift snatch, lasting barely more than two minutes.
Nkomo’s teenage girlfriend Emily Cahill, of Beaufort Park in Golders Green, used an unsuspecting bystander as cover as she acted as a lookout for the robbers.
Detective Constable Jim Laird, of the Met’s Flying Squad, said: “We are pleased with the sentences the defendants have received. They were willing to use extreme acts of violence against the staff.
“Had they not been arrested they would have continued committing violent armed robberies.”
CCTV footage taken from the restaurant shows the three masked men stroll into the fast food eatery armed with a shotgun in the early hours of February 14.
Once in the restaurant Shejja Rehman, of St Pauls Avenue in Slough, unzipped his jacket to hand over a sawn-off shotgun to Christian Sankar, from St Marys in Barking who loaded the gun and waved it at terrified staff.
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The armed robbers then forced the restaurant manager into a back office where she was made to open a safe. The men loaded piles of cash into rucksack before making off into the night.
Cahill, 18, sat chatting to a member of the public while her boyfriend and the two others carried out the robbery. She left a short time later.
On December 2 at Blackfriars Crown Court, Nkomo was sentenced to 11 years in prison after being found guilty of conspiracy to rob. Cahill, 18, was sentenced to 40 months imprisonment having pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery and possession of a firearm.
Sankar, 25, was jailed for nine years after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery and possession of a firearm.
Rehman, 21, was sentenced for eight and a half years in prison for armed robbery having pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery and possession of a firearm.
