These are the people jailed or locked up this week for crimes linked to our region.
They include Boy A, who murdered Ava White in Liverpool city centre. He faces a minimum of 13 years in prison after being sentenced earlier this week.
Also sentenced this week were a voyeur who "visually raped" a woman by spying on her for well over a year and an EncroChat drug dealer who organised the importation of cocaine via a senior dealer known only by his Encro handle JurgenSixNineteen.
READ MORE: Paedophile dad performed sex act for 19 minutes on Skype
A sex offender who knifed a teen on a bus was also jailed, as was a paedophile who sent a 19 minute video of himself performing a sex act over Skype to an account which he thought was run by a 12 year old.
Here are the people locked up in our region this week.
Kristian Kolar
A pervert secretly filmed his victim having sex with her boyfriend after installing spy cameras in her home.
Kristian Kolar "visually raped" the woman by covertly recording thousands of her most intimate moments for more than a year. When his perverted behaviour was finally exposed, police also discovered sick videos of women having sex with horses and dogs on his computer.
Liverpool Crown Court heard yesterday, Tuesday, that the 39-year-old, from Warrington, fitted the "concealed" cameras in the complainant's living room, bedroom and bathroom in February 2019. They were only discovered in September the following year, having taken 20,315 "voyeuristic images" and 4,311 videos of her in the intervening period.
This "insidious invasion of her privacy for sexual gratification" also included films of the woman in bed, on the toilet and naked in the shower. Police subsequently seized Kolar's laptop and discovered he had been collecting bestiality porn since 2017.
A total of 17 such images and two videos were found on the device, including a clip which showed a dog "mounting a naked blonde woman" and another involving a woman and a horse engaged in intercourse.
Kolar, of Ross Close in Old Hall, admitted voyeurism and possession of extreme pornographic images. The factory worker, who has no previous convictions and was assisted by an interpreter in the dock, was jailed for 14 months.
Boy A
The boy who murdered schoolgirl Ava White was locked up for life with a minimum of 13 years.
Boy A, from South Liverpool, who was convicted of murder in May, cannot be named for legal reasons. He stabbed the Year 8 Notre Dame Catholic College pupil with a flick knife after an argument about him filming her on Snapchat. Prosecutors alleged the teen laughed and ran away.
They said he ditched his knife, designer coat and mobile phone in a "cover up", then took selfies, got butter for crumpets and played Call of Duty. Boy A gave a false alibi to police and blamed another boy for killing Ava, before changing his story and claiming he acted in self-defence.
The teen said he "didn't mean to" stab the schoolgirl and was "trying to get her away from me". He said he thought she was a boy, who might be armed, and feared she would "batter" him.
A jury found him guilty of murder after two hours and eight minutes of deliberation and a 12-day trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
On Monday, Justice Amanda Yip told him: "Unlike Ava you will still have a chance to grow up, but your life has been changed forever. You will only be released if you can show you are no longer a danger.
"Because of your age, you may be released while you are still a young man. I know that will seem unfair to Ava’s family when they have lost the chance to see her grow up.
"I accept that you did not go out that evening intending to kill, or even to hurt, anyone. You did not know Ava.
"You came across each other by chance. It is a tragedy that the events leading to Ava’s death started with something so small.
"There was a bit of what looked like pushing and shoving between you, and that is exactly where it should have ended. You could have run away and escaped, just as you did after you stabbed Ava."
John Cass
A cocaine "broker" was involved in the supply of more than £400,000 of drugs on behalf of a mysterious importer known only as "Jurgen".
John Cass, from Kirkby, secretly operated under the pseudonym FrostFortress on the encrypted communications platform EncroChat.
Liverpool Crown Court on Friday that the 34-year-old acted as a "broker and intermediary sourcing large quantities of recently imported class A and B drugs". Cass, of Corbet Close, had 64 other handles stored in the contact list of his Encro phone, with messages exchanged with 22 of them.
In particular, he had liaised with the handle JurgenSixNineteen - described as an "upstream supplier operating outside of the UK". The first-time offender took possession of 10kg of cocaine on his behalf, drugs with a wholesale value of between £365,000 and £425,000.
Cass received commission of approximately £500 per kilo for onward sale of the illicit substances. A range of messages recovered by police detail Cass’ negotiations with JurgenSixNineteen, as well as a conversation about the potential of obtaining a gun.
Cass was linked to the FrostFortress handle after being pulled over by police in October last year having been "driving erratically" on Whitefield Drive in Kirkby. He admitted conspiracy to supply cocaine and cannabis, money laundering and possession of criminal property and was jailed for ten years.
Amanda Bywater and Phillip Park
A nan and her partner plotted for months in an attempt to get a teenager to have sex with both of them.
Amanda Bywater, 48, and Phillip Park, 37 both encouraged each other to have sex with the same girl in a series of messages sent between the pair on WhatsApp. Bywater and Park were both jailed after a judge at Liverpool Crown Court told them he was sure they had the intention of having sex with the child.
Jonathan Rogers, prosecuting, said Bywater, from Widnes, and Park, from Leigh, met on a swingers' website and soon began messaging each other frequently throughout 2019.
He said they soon began discussing having sex with a particular teenager. In messages read out in court, the pair discussed how they wanted to have sex with the child in graphic detail. They would sometimes phrase the messages as a joke but later return to the topic again and again.
Eventually, the pair even discussed plans to have sex with the teen and whether they could ply her with alcohol to encourage her to agree. Their sick messages were later discovered before any sexual activity took place and they were reported to the police.
Park, of Holden Road, Leigh, and Bywater, of Brooklands Park, Widnes, were jailed for four and a half years.
Andrew McMullen
A paedophile performed a sex act during a 19 minute Skype call with an account he thought was run by a 12-year-old girl.
Yet dad Andrew McMullen was actually talking to a police officer when he sent a series of vile messages asking them to perform sex acts and encouraging them to engage in sexual activity.
Nardeen Nemat, prosecuting, told the court McMullen had begun sending messages to an account run by a police officer under the name “Izzy” on a chat site in May this year. Ms Nemat said: “The officer logged onto a chat site called ChatiW under the user “Year8off”. He used a profile pic of a 18-year-old female, which was the youngest option on the drop down menu on the platform.
“Around 12 minutes later ‘Izzy’ received a message from a user, ‘Wirral xx’, a 53-year-old male, now known to be the defendant. His message said ‘watch me’. Izzy replied ‘no thanks’, to which the defendant said ‘shame give good show, make you horny, big c***. Izzy told the defendant she was not 18.”
He continued to message the account and eventually sent a 19 minute Skype broadcast of himself performing a sex act. McMullen was later arrested and police also found 272 indecent images on his phone.
He later pleaded guilty to possession of indecent images, inciting a child to engage in sexual communication and inciting a child to watch sexual acts. McMullen, of Old Greasby Road, was jailed for two years and nine months.
Hamid Akhonzada
A knife-wielding convicted sex offender with a “compulsion” for violence slashed a teenager’s throat with a knife on a Runcorn bus after being moved north from Croydon with no continuity of care - despite suffering a "major psychotic disorder".
Hamid Akhonzada, 26, launched the attack on May 8 last year after sitting behind a young couple on a Palacefields to Brookvale service in Runcorn. Dafydd Roberts, prosecuting at Chester Crown Court on Friday, said Akhonzada grabbed the 17-year-old boy by the hair from behind then “held his head back and drew a bladed article described as a steak knife across the throat”.
The youth tried to evade him and fight back as shocked passengers looked on and his girlfriend, 16, was also slightly injured as she tried to help him. Akhonzada, of Liskeard Close, Brookvale, Runcorn, punched the boy three or four times as they struggled in the baggage hold and then fled the scene when the bus stopped.
Upon their arrival, officers from Cheshire Police found the victim, who was sitting on the bus staunching the blood from his neck with a Covid facemask. Mr Roberts said the teenager received glue and butterfly stitches to treat six or seven “scratches” to his neck, described as "cuts" by Judge Michael Leeming.
Afghan refugee Akhonzada was arrested on May 14 in Croydon, where he had previously lived until being moved north by officials to Runcorn. He gave “no comment” answers in police interview.
Three days later on remand in HMP Altcourse, he beat prison officer Michael Bennett unconscious, first by calling for attention from his cell then punching Mr Bennett. Mr Roberts said Akhonzada had 10 previous convictions for 23 offences including two for common assault and assaulting a constable in 2016, assault occasioning actual bodily harm in 2017, and common assault and sexual assault in 2018 leading to a prison sentence.
Kevin Slack, defending, said Akhonzada was diagnosed with schizophrenia after he arrived in the UK having fled Afghanistan aged 16 after a series of traumas. Judge Leeming acknowledged the seriousness of his condition but countered that convicted sex offender Akhonzada had sought to “self-medicate” with cannabis and spice instead of seeking help.
He said the knifeman had a “compulsion” for violence as he jailed him for four years, with four years on extended licence due to dangerousness. Akhonzada will have to serve 32 months behind bars before being considered for parole.
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