Graffiti gang face prison for three years of rail vandalism

Damage: Craig Norton, spray can in hand, runs past a vandalised train

Four graffiti vandals were facing jail this afternoon for causing more than £134,000 damage to trains in a three-year campaign.

The gang not only wrecked trains and depots but then gloried in their destruction by filming themselves and their distinctive "tags" or signatures.

To show their contempt for the travelling public whose journeys they disrupted, they would leave "messages" to commuters and smiley-face logos.

One message on the side of a train read: "Sorry if this has caused your journey a delay."

Darren Leung-Kwok, 19, Fahad Ali, 18, and Craig Norton, 18 — all of Croydon — and 19-year-old Richard Wilson of Coulsdon pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit criminal damage between April 2005 and April last year and were being sentenced at Southwark crown court.

British Transport Police Graffiti Unit Pc Ian Garden said they were arrested after an investigation into a graffiti gang calling themselves the HMS crew.

The defendants could be identified by their distinctive "tags": Leung-Kwok was associated with the tags "Range" and "HMS Crew", Ali was known as "dyva", "dyver", "aved" and "HMS", Wilson was "two time", "two", "2 time", "kaps", "nuta", "nuts" and "HMS crew" and Norton was "sends" and "HMS crew".

Pc Garden said: "This group was involved in a sustained campaign to commit criminal damage. Over a three-year period they targeted trains running on the Victoria to Croydon and London Bridge to Croydon lines by scrawling tags both outside and inside the carriages.

"In one incident, Leung-Kwok is caught on CCTV wearing a T-shirt with his name emblazoned on the front. They broke into train depots and risked their lives by trespassing on the tracks to spray their tags on trains and would wait at stations to film the damage."

Pc Garden said that although the vandals derived some sort of kudos from tagging, the damage created huge disruption for commuters.

"Numerous carriages and trains have had to be taken out of service to be cleaned and repaired after this group wreaked havoc," Pc Garden said.

"In a show of what can only be described as utter contempt for the travelling public, the group would often scrawl messages to commuters on the outside of trains. The sentencing today will no doubt bring a sigh of relief to those members of the public who had their journeys blighted by this group.

"BTP will seek out those individuals or groups who are determined to commit criminal damage on the railways and cause disruption to services."

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