Northampton gang members jailed for 13 years for stashing handgun used to shoot at three men outside pub over drug debt

Kyron Smye (Left) fired a converted handgun at three men before stashing in the garden at Niall Kelly's (Right) house.

A Northampton drug dealer who fired a converted handgun at three men outside a Weymouth pub over a cocaine debt has been jailed for over eight years.

Kyron Smye, from Omega House in Northampton, pulled up near to the pub in May 2018 armed with a converted 9mm handgun and a clip of crude 'blank' rounds fitted with steel shrapnel.

There, on a busy Tuesday afternoon at 5.50pm, he opened fire on three men in a bid to "scare" his targets over a drug debt they reportedly owed him.

Northampton Crown Court heard yesterday (July 20) how the then-20-year-old then fled back to Northampton and palmed the gun off to fellow gang member Niall Kelly, 21, who stashed it at the bottom of his garden in Penrhyn Road.

However, both men were caught in Northamptonshire Police's large-scale 'Operation Poetry' to tackle county lines drug-dealing, and when officers raided the house in 2019 they arrested both Smye and Kelly before finding the handgun in a bush.

At their sentencing yesterday, the court heard 93.2 grams of cocaine was also found stashed in the attic of Smye's girlfriend's flat.

The pair were reportedly dealing for the 'Abra' county line gang to funnel drugs into Northampton from London.

Both men pleaded guilty to the firearm offences in Magistrate's Court.

Smye's barrister told the court the 23-year-old had "deliberately" fired the gun to scare the men, rather than "aiming it and in fact missing."

The blank rounds in the converted handgun were fitted with pieces of steel that firearm officers deemed "had the potential to inflict lethal harm". When police recovered the weapon, it still had two rounds in the magazine.

He was jailed for a total of eight-and-a-half years for possessing a firearm and for the drug offences.

Kelly was also jailed for five years for possessing a firearm. The court heard the 21-year-old "would have known full-well" about the shooting and was complicit in stashing the gun in the garden.