Man who plotted to murder gang member involved in record-breaking heist attacked in prison

Sky News

2 days ago

A man jailed for plotting to murder a member of the gang that carried out Britain's biggest-ever cash robbery has been attacked in prison.
Daniel Kelly, 46, was one of three men found guilty of conspiring to murder Paul Allen, 46, who was shot twice as he stood in his kitchen in Woodford, east London, on 11 July 2019.
The attack left the former cage fighter - who was a member of the Securitas heist gang that stole £54m from a cash depot in Tonbridge, Kent, in 2006 - paralysed from the chest down.
Kelly was sentenced to 36 years in prison, with an extra five years on licence, at the Old Bailey in April.
Louis Ahearne, 36, was jailed for 33 years, and his brother Stewart Ahearne, 46, was jailed for 30 years over the shooting, likened by detectives to "the plot [of] a Hollywood blockbuster".
A source told Sky News that Kelly was attacked by another prisoner who tried to slit his throat on his arrival to Frankland prison, in County Durham, last week.
"Danny is a gunman happy to shoot people but not scary with his hands. He's a dead man walking in jail," they said.
It is understood Kelly suffered only minor injuries and the Prison Service is treating the attack as a minor incident.
Allen was living in a large detached rented house with his partner and three young children after being released from an 18-year prison sentence over the Securitas raid when he was shot.
In her sentencing remarks, Judge Sarah Whitehouse KC said she believed the three men convicted "were motivated by a promise of financial gain", but she had "no doubt" others were involved.
The day before the shooting, Kelly and Louis Ahearne used a rented car to carry out a burglary in Kent, accessing the gated community by pretending to be police officers.
A month before that, Kelly and the Ahearnes stole more than $3.5m (£2.78m) worth of Ming dynasty antiques from the Museum of Far Eastern Arts in Geneva, for which the brothers had been jailed in Switzerland.
Kelly is also wanted in Japan over the robbery of a Tokyo jewellery store in 2015 in which a security guard was punched in the face - but extradition proceedings have been put on hold while he serves his sentence.