Jail looms for looting millionaire’s daughter
Student who was thieves’ ‘chauffeur’ faces prison
Laura Johnson leaves court yesterday after being convicted of burglary and handling stolen goods
A MILLIONAIRE’S daughter was yesterday facing a lengthy jail sentence for her part in a looting rampage on the ‘worst night’ of the summer riots.
Laura Johnson, a former grammar school prefect, acted as a chauffeur for a drug-dealing gangster and his friends as they pillaged electrical goods during a seven- hour crime spree.
The university student, 20, shunned her privileged background and embraced an ‘exciting new world’ of cannabis, alcohol and violent gangster rap music, willingly partaking in an ‘orgy of looting’.
After a two-week trial, a jury at Inner London Crown Court yesterday found Johnson guilty of burglary and handling stolen goods. The maximum sentence for handling is 14 years.
Dressed demurely in a black pencil skirt and peach blouse, Johnson stared blankly ahead, swaying slightly, as the guilty verdicts were read out.
Judge Patricia Lees warned her and a 17-year-old accomplice, who cannot be named for legal reasons, to expect prison sentences.
She said: ‘You have been convicted of serious offences. These offences are aggravated by the
‘Scurrying like wild rats’
fact they were committed within the timeframe of the civil unrest last summer in London.
‘This spree of burglaries and handling stolen goods that you both took a willing part in will attract most certainly in my mind the likelihood of a custodial sentence.’
After leaving the dock Johnson, who has mental health problems and has made numerous suicide attempts, wished reporters a ‘happy Easter’.
Her parents Robert and Lindsay, who have sat in court each day, refused to comment but her father, a 56-year- old company director, said he would consider an appeal.
Throughout the trial, Johnson claimed she had been terrified into driving convicted robber and ‘bad boy’ Emmanuel Okubote, 20, and his friends, with talk of guns and knives.
She said she had been virtually kidnapped and was acting entirely out of duress because the men were ‘not the sort of people you say no to’.
She also blamed her descent into lawlessness on being raped by two men in the weeks leading up to the riots – an allegation which went unreported to the police – and on having a complete mental breakdown after being dumped by her previous boyfriend.
But after almost 11 hours of deliberation, a jury of four women and eight men yesterday rejected this and agreed with the prosecution that Johnson, then 19, had been acting of her own free will as she joined hundreds of looters who ‘scurried like wild rats’.
The Exeter University student, who lives in her parents’ £1million country house in Orpington, Kent, had become infatuated with Okubote.
So desperate was she to please him that she drove him and two other balaclava-clad passengers as they looted branches of Currys and Comet in South-east London.
When she was arrested, Johnson revved the engine at police officers who said they ‘feared for their lives’. Inside her car they found a haul of cigarettes, alcohol and televisions and a ‘quantity’ of condoms in Johnson’s purse.
Earlier in the day she had been sending sexual and flirtatious texts to Okubote, whom she met through a friend in a mental health institute, saying how much she ‘missed’ the drug dealer.
Okubote is currently in Feltham Young Offenders Institution after being recalled for breaching his licence in relation to a 30-month conviction for possession of crack cocaine with intent to supply. He has previous convictions for robbery, burglary, theft, assault and possessing an imitation firearm.
He was charged with kidnap last August after a man accused him of throwing bleach in his face. But when the case came to trial in January the prosecution offered no evidence and a formal not guilty verdict was entered.
‘Flirtatious text messages’
Johnson was convicted along with the 17-year-old of one count of burglary at Comet and one count of handling stolen goods at Currys but found not guilty of a third count of burglary or an alternative one of handling stolen goods at a BP petrol station. Her accomplice had previously pleaded guilty to burgling the BP petrol station. Johnson was granted bail and will be sentenced on May 3.
A third passenger, Alex Elliott-Joahill, 18, had pleaded guilty to charges of burglary and handling stolen goods.