Kurtis Dilks has been sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted of being part of a four-man gang that broke into the home of former England football Ashley Cole and threatened to cut his fingers off.
Dilks, 35, was last week found guilty of breaking into the ex- Arsenal and Chelsea man’s home alongside three other individuals back on January 21, 2020. A resident of Clifton, Nottinghamshire, the group forced their way into Cole’s Surrey home with a sledgehammer at about 9:30pm and then threatened to remove digits from his hand.
The courier had initially denied three charges of conspiracy to commit burglary, four charges of converting criminal property, three charges of conspiracy to commit robbery and two counts of robbery.
Following the sentencing, Dilks has been handed a 30-year jail spell as punishment for the crimes with a five-year extended licence period.
In addition to the attack on former England international Cole, Dilks was also found guilty of conspiring to rob the wife of ex- Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Tom Huddlestone in May 2019 alongside fellow defendants Ashley Cumberpatch and Andrew Macdonald.
In total, defendants had stood trial accused of a number of offences in relation to "ruthlessly executed" robberies carried out between October 2018 and January 2020.
Cumberpatch and Macdonald - former residents of Carlton and Woodstock Avenue in Nottingham respectively - were also both found guilty of 11 charges in total.
Tevfik Guccuk of Southgate in London, was found guilty on five charges and Sercan Evsin, a resident of Barnet, was found guilty on four charges. Christopher Yorke, from Rose Ash Lane in Arnold, was found guilty on one charge.
The remaining four men on trial at the same time were found not guilty.
Dilks in particular was described as a "dominant and dangerous" robber but during the trial told the jury that he believed someone was framing him after his DNA was found on a knife outside Cole’s home. He claimed an individual had stolen the knife, as well as other items from Dilks’ van and he was “most certainly not” involved in the robbery.
Under questioning from his defence barrister, Simon Eckersley, Dilks said: “The only aspect I can believe is those items were stolen out of my van. It’s something I don’t do every day, to check everything is there. I would only check if I needed to use the item.”
The jury deliberated the result for four days in total and returned their verdicts at lunchtime on Friday July 8.
