Leeds Crown Court: Criminals locked up this week include paedophile who targeted teens stood at bus stops

In addition, two men were jailed for their part in a £1 million cannabis operation, a gang were given 42 years between them orchestrating a cocaine ring, while a Leeds man was detained on a hospital order for the brutal killing of a woman in a North Yorkshire town.

Samuel Frost

Steroid-fuelled paedophile Samuel Frost, who has a lengthy record from crimes against children, was convicted of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old and then a 13-year-old at the stops on Garforth’s Main Street, where he was living at the time. Committed months apart, he walked up to the unsuspecting youngsters and touched them before walking away.

The 37-year-old was also found to have a partially-working double-barrelled shotgun at his home. Judge Simon Batiste told him: “You pose a significant risk of harm. To provide suitable protection to society I’m satisfied that an extended prison sentence is suitable.”

He was handed a 12-year jail term.

Frost was convicted of indecent assault of a child in 2001 and sexual activity with a child in 2006. He also sexually assaulted a child in 2014, riding a BMX through a Castleford park where he touched the 12-year-old girl before riding off. He was also convicted of sexual activity in the presence of children after he masturbated in front of a 12 and a 13-year-old girl at Wakefield Kirkgate Railway Station.

Zef Gjoka and Dritan Mrozi

The Albanians, both aged 35, were both jailed for being “gardeners” at a £1 million cannabis factory near Wakefield. Like many immigrants, they came to the UK with the hope of securing work, but were put to work by a criminal gang and forced to take the brunt of the inevitable bust.

The “industrial scale” drugs factory on Malvern Road, Knottingley was raided by officers in December of last year where they uncovered 1,100 plants, capable of producing up to 100kg of the drug for an eye-watering seven-figure profit.

Gjoka and Mrozi were handed five-and-a-half years’ jail between them.

Sebastian Brooke

‘”Laughing” Brooke reversed into a police car as he tried to flee his partner’s home, with an officer being forced to dive for cover as he approached the defendant behind the wheel.

A second officer sat in the police car was left injured when Brooke smashed into the vehicle. The 41-year-old then crashed into two more cars in the street as he tried to make off. The court was told that Brooke was “laughing and screaming in an hysterical way” during the incident.

He said that he had also come off the heroin substitute, methadone, since he was remanded in jail. The judge jailed him for 27 months and gave him a 37-and-a-half-months’ driving ban.

Marcus Thomas and John Burgon

Thomas and Burgon were among a seven-strong criminal gang responsible for machete violence and drugs supply in the Leeds area. Police have said the attacks, linked to rival urban street gangs involved in the ‘ring and bring’ drugs trade, “saw horrific injuries being caused to young teenage boys in spates of incidents across the city”.

The majority of those arrested during the most recent operation were charged with offences and among them was Marcus Thomas of Gipton, identified as the ringleader of a group involved in heroin and crack cocaine.

A range of tactics were used to build up a “clear evidential picture” of his involvement in the trade, along with links to his ‘lieutenants’. Thomas was charged in relation to conspiracy to supply Class A drugs between May 1 and October 1, 2020, along with John Burgon, Michael Sharlotte, and Thomas's sister Amie. The gang were jailed for a total of 42 years.

Shahin Darvish-Narenjbon

Asylum seeker and former Leeds resident Darvish-Narenjbon was detained in a secure hospital indefinitely after the bloody murder of an elderly woman who pitied him and took him in. The 34-year-old stabbed, strangled and assaulted Brenda Blainey at The Grove in Thornton-le-Dale, near Pickering, in January 2022.

He slashed her throat with a kitchen knife. The relationship between them began after she met him when he worked in a Carluccio’s restaurant while studying civil engineering at the University of Leeds in 2013. Mrs Blainey invited him to stay at her house and gave him use of her car, and he was a regular visitor to Thornton-le-Dale as the 88-year-old became increasingly frail.

Psychiatrists agreed that Darvish-Narenjbon, who was born in Iran and had lived in the UK since the age of 15, was ‘acutely psychotic’ and suffering from paranoid schizophrenia when he attacked Mrs Blainey in the kitchen as she was on the phone to the local shop placing a grocery order.

Daniel Wallace

Sick Wallacecame up with a money-making scheme by suggesting to a woman he sexually abuse her two young children, record it and sell the videos to other paedophiles. But his vile plan backfired when the woman contacted police. The 34-year-old convicted rapist tried to deny he sent the messages to the woman, claiming his Snapchat account had been hacked.

Wallace, of Recreation Street, Holbeck admitted a charge of intending to arrange sexual activity with a child.

The judge conceded that Wallace was “borderline intellectually disabled” but said he was convinced he would have gone through with the offending, given the chance. He jailed him for 45 months, with an additional five-year extended licence period.