A county lines drug gang leader is hoping to reduce his prison sentence after he kidnapped a man twice in the same year. 

Lennon Gomes, of Feltham, was handed an 18-year sentence for his role in two terrifying ordeals that involved a machete and a baseball bat. 

The man, who was picked up by a county lines drug-gang he had worked for that was known as the ‘Pirates’ at Slough train station, was blackmailed and told his mother would have to pay £1,000 for his safe release.

And eight months later, in December 2020, the same man was picked up by the same gang in London and threatened with a machete in Hounslow after his jealous ex-girlfriend, from Reading, told one of the group’s leaders, Lennon Gomes, that he intended to steal money from them. 

After threatening him with a machete, the gang beat up the man’s drug-running partner with a baseball bat before driving him round in the back of a car.

It was after this that the man decided he needed to leave the Pirates for good, and was forced by Gomes to hand over more cash for his ‘freedom’. 

Eventually, Gomes and four others - Mustafa Mohamud, Anne-Marie Garland, Syed Shah, and Naveed Mahmood -- were convicted of offences including blackmail, money laundering and false imprisonment in relation to these incidents following a trial through August and September.

Lennon Gomes, 22, of Shaftesbury Avenue, Feltham, was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for three counts of false imprisonment, two counts of blackmail, and two counts of conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine at Reading Crown Court on Friday, October 29, 2021. 

The 22-year-old is due to appear at the Court of Appeal on Wednesday, September 14 to appeal his sentence.