Drugs importation gang member fires shots as police enter home to arrest him in dramatic footage

Dramatic police bodycam footage shows the moment shots were fired from an imitation gun as police entered the address of a suspected drugs importation gang member to arrest him.

Two women reported their suitcases and passports had been stolen after arriving in London on a flight from Los Angeles on January 11 2023. After analysing CCTV, detectives traced the suspects, a man and woman, to a car registered to Eleanar Attard. Officers attended her home in Broxbourne where they arrested Attard and her husband Nicholas Panayiotou.

When officers examined Panayiotou’s phone, they found evidence that the theft was part of a plan to import and then steal cannabis. A WhatsApp group contained details of a plan to smuggle 58kgs of cannabis into the UK from the USA. Officers also found evidence of how they planned to steal the cannabis from the two women recruited to import it. This was by Panayiotou and his wife posing as customs officers and pretending to seize the suitcases and passports from the women when they arrived in the UK.

Other members of the WhatsApp group, Constantinos Zavros, Luke Wileman and Koby Haik, were also involved in the conspiracy. When police attended Haik’s home to arrest him, he stood at the top of the stairs armed with a baseball bat and fired two shots from a gun. Officers detained Haik and the gun was later confirmed to be an imitation that contained blank rounds.

Contantinos Zavros, of Carlton Avenue, Southgate, Koby Haik, of Ashfield Road, Southgate, and Panayiotou, of Sawells, Broxbourne, were sentenced on April 12 at Isleworth Crown Court. Zavros was sentenced to six years, 11 months' imprisonment. Haik was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment and Panayiotou was sentenced to four years, one month's imprisonment. Wileman, of Faygate Lane, Horsham, is due to be on May 9.

Eleanar Attard, of Sawells, Broxbourne, was sentenced on March 15 to 8 months’ imprisonment (suspended for 12 months) and ordered to carry out a 10-day Rehabilitation Activity Requirement and complete 100 hours of unpaid work.