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Four teenagers have been sentenced to a combined total of nearly fourteen years in prison following a kidnapping that took place in Portsmouth in January.
On Thursday 11 January 2024 at 02:50am we received a report that an eighteen year-old man from Portsmouth had been kidnapped. Enquiries established that the victim had been walking on Hartley Road in the city when four people wearing balaclavas in a small white car had stopped him and bundled him into the back at around 10:15pm the previous evening. He was blindfolded, assaulted with a taser and then driven to woodland in Denmead where he was tied to a tree and a gun and knife were held to his head. The people that had assaulted and threatened him then left and the victim was able to free himself and sought help.
Our investigation initially focused on a text message sent to the victim’s family from a number that was linked to a seventeen year-old boy from Portsmouth. An image of the victim had also been posted to social media and this had been reported to our colleagues at Sussex Police who established that two of the people also seen in the picture were two fifteen year-old boys from West Sussex. A subsequent search of one of the boy’s home addresses by our officers identified a knuckleduster and clothing of interest to our investigation. The other fifteen year-old boy’s phone was also identified as being in the Denmead area at the time of the offence. At 9:00pm on Friday 12 January a white Ford Fiesta matching the description of the vehicle involved was stopped on Milton Road and the driver, a seventeen year-old boy, was arrested and his phone was seized. This phone revealed regular contact with Jake Guinelly, who was eighteen years old at the time, that corresponded with the timings of the offence. Items including a machete, an axe, and cannabis were subsequently seized from Guinelly’s address at Suffolk Road in Southsea.
All four were subsequently charged and appeared in court in relation to the kidnapping. We are not able to release details that would identify those under the age of eighteen. The teenagers were sentenced as follows:
Officer in the case, Detective Constable Amy Thatcher from the Eastern Area Investigations Team said: “This was an incredibly traumatic event for the eighteen year-old that these four teenagers targeted. I’m pleased that we were able to safeguard the victim and that our enquiries have led to this court result. These sentences send a clear message that this kind of serious violence is not tolerated in Portsmouth, or anywhere in Hampshire & on the Isle of Wight. I hope that this court result helps the man who was targeted to move on with his life in the knowledge that his attackers are now serving significant sentences.
“This was a complex investigation that required detailed digital and forensic examinations in order to identify those involved and their movements. I’d like to thank all those officers involved, including our colleagues in Sussex, who have helped us to secure these court results”.