Press Association
Saturday 11th February 2012
A teenage woman kidnapped and tortured a chef in London in a bid to get him to hand over £4,000, a court has heard.
Venrika Kelly, 18, and three men held Dane Williams for more than 12 hours in a garage in the east end of London on October 3 last year, the court was told.
Kelly and the three men in the dock at Southwark Crown Court in London were the "leading lights" in the gang which kidnapped and tortured Mr Williams, whipping him with a car's cam belt so that its imprints were left marked on his body, prosecutors said.
Ken Millett, prosecuting, said the case was "about the torture of a man over £4,000 in a garage in east London".
Kelly, of Southgate; Samuel Walters, 36, of Firefly Gardens, East Ham; Walters's brother Mathew, 38, of Greenhill Grove, Manor Park; and Ryan Freeman, 24, of Bulwer Road, Leytonstone, all deny kidnap, false imprisonment, causing grievous bodily harm with intent and blackmail.
The jury of eight men and four women heard Mr Williams was a chef at the Too Sweet and Spicy restaurant in Stratford, east London, when two men approached him.
The men, who claimed to be from Milton Keynes but were actually from Liverpool, were looking for a chef who used to work in the restaurant but, when told he had left, asked Mr Williams if he wanted to buy any drugs.
Mr Williams told them he was not interested but would "ask around", Mr Millett said. He then arranged for the Walters brothers to buy 2kg of cannabis, with a street value of £4,000, on September 30 last year.
"However, it seems that the cannabis was not what it should have been," Mr Millett said. "There was a small amount of real cannabis on the top but inside it was rubbish. Samuel Walters and the rest were, to use the impression, ripped off."
Unable to get in touch with the dealers, referred to in court as CDA, the men went after Mr Williams, telling him they held him responsible as the CDA were his contacts and his friends. They kidnapped and tortured him, holding him in the garage in Tilbury Road, Stratford, overnight on October 3 and into the afternoon of the following day until "a promise was made by him and his sister to pay out the monies owed to them".