Wigan's week in court

​​A man who kept almost £7,000 in benefit payments to which he wasn't entitled has been fined.

Zachary Sutton, 31, of Oakhead in Leigh, appeared before Wigan magistrates to plead guilty to five charges of wrongfully retaining credit between 2018 and 2021 and failing to take reasonable steps to ensure that it was repaid. He was fined and must also pay court costs and a victim services surcharge which total £1,275.

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An Up Holland man who made and possessed vile images of child abuse has been given a community sentence and faces major restrictions on computer, phone and social media use.

Daniel Healey, 33, of Higher Lane, appeared before Wigan and Leigh magistrates to admit possessing 52 prohibited images of children and making indecent images of youngsters, 10 of which were judged to fall into category B and 11 in category C.

He was ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work and 30 days of rehabilitation activities while paying £175 to the court and victim services. He must also sign on the sex offenders' register for five years and is the subject of a five-year sexual harm prevention order which means he must not have any unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 16 or sleep in the same house as a minor unless with the permission of the parents who would have to be aware of his convictions.

The order also imposes a raft of restrictions on computer use including being banned from using encryption devices or anything that can delete devices' browser history. He must provide passwords and devices for inspection by the police and must not dispose of any without permission.

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A Wigan man convicted of sexually touching a woman without her consent has been jailed.

Jamie Ratchford, 35, of Avon Road, Norley, had denied committing the offence against a woman over the age of 16 on October 7 last year and also pleaded not guilty to being in possession of class B drug amphetamine on October 27. But after failing to turn up at Wigan Magistrates' Court for his trial he was convicted of both offences in his absence. Now, having gone to the sentencing hearing, Ratchford was given a 20-week custodial sentence, the bench telling him they were locking him up because he had a "flagrant disregard for people and property."

It was ordered that his amphetamine be destroyed and he must pay £154 to victim services.

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A second teenager has denied the murder of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey.

Brianna, a transgender girl from Birchwood in Warrington, was found with fatal stab wounds on a path in Culcheth Linear Park shortly after 3pm on Saturday February 11.

Two 16-year-olds, a boy and a girl, have been charged with her murder. At a pre-trial hearing at Manchester Crown Court on Wednesday October 4, one of the defendants pleaded not guilty to the murder. The other teenager had entered a not guilty plea at a hearing at Minshull Street Crown Court, in Manchester, in July.

Reporting restrictions prevent the identification of which of the defendants entered the earlier plea. Neither defendant can be named because of their age. The girl, from Warrington, and the boy, from Leigh, were both in the dock for the hearing.

The pre-trial hearing is expected to last two days. A trial has been set for November 27.

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The trial of a man who denied making dozens of child abuse images five years ago has been axed after he finally changed his pleas to guilty.

Karl Ashton, 35, of Rugby Road, Leigh, had previously stood before Wigan justices to plead not guilty to having indecent images falling into all three categories of seriousness - four category A (the gravest), five category B and 133 C between April and November 2018.

A trial had been due to take place at Bolton Crown Court but it was postponed several times, with the latest hearing due to take place on October 3. But after it was moved to Manchester Crown Court, Minshull Street, Ashton made his admissions and the trial was vacated. He has now been released on bail pending sentence at the same court on October 30.

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A drugs gang that peddled £7m worth of cocaine from a former Wigan Methodist church have been handed combined jail sentences of more than 60 years.

Its eight members bought and sold large quantities of the class A drug and flooded the country’s streets with it, Manchester Crown Court heard.

The dealers used the ex-church in Bamfurlong, which was more recently an antiques shop belonging to family of two of the offenders, as a drug warehouse where cocaine was packaged before farming out to addicts.

But the drugs ring collapsed after a law enforcement hack of the EncroChat communications network in June 2020, which led to a series of arrests and house searches.

The hearing was told officers found designer clothing, expensive watches and numerous phones. And messages from the EncroChat hack handed over to Greater Manchester Police showed in great detail some of the gang’s workings, including the adulteration of drugs to make them go further and maximise profits.

There were also details of transactions, some of them five-figure, and a debtors’ list plus the suggestion that customers would receive a visit if they didn’t keep up with payments.

Sent down were Dean Smallwood, 42, of Land Gate Lane, Bryn; Jamie Kenny, 32, of Ashwood Avenue, Abram; Leon Kenny, 31, of Warrington Road in Abram; Nathan Cooke, 31, of Eskdale Road, Hindley; Sam Causer, 32, of Egerton Street, Abram; Nathan Hart, 32, of Warrington Road, Abram; Ian Ormshaw, 42, of Mesnes Avenue, Wigan and Daryl Golding, 36, of Brookland Avenue, Hindley.

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