A young father who stole a £5,000 diamond-encrusted Cartier watch was killed by the owner days after he offered to return it.
Carl Campbell, 33, was killed as he sat in his car at a set of traffic lights in West Bromwich, West Midlands, England on December 27 last year. Last week, three men were convicted of the murder. They are Mohammed Humza, 19, Jaspal Rai, 24, and Vikesh Chauhan, 24. All of them will be sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court today and could face life behind bars.
The plot to kill Campbell began when he stole a Cartier watch which belonged to a man who “worked for some very dangerous and influential drug dealers”. The father-of-one met Vikesh Chauhan, 24, known as Fish, at a petrol station to buy some cannabis. Chauhan was wearing an expensive watch belonging to Humza and Campell stole it from him.
Afterwards, Chauhan told Humza what had happened and he wasn’t happy about it. Campbell soon discovered that both men are dangerous people who work for influential drug dealers so he called Chauhan to apologise and offered to return the watch. But, as instructed by his gang bosses, Chauhan told Campbell to keep the watch and added: “Just hope that you live long enough to wear it.”
Soon after, the gang began making preparations to scare Campell by shooting at his car. They claimed that the plan was not to kill him, but only to scare him, and an opportunity came when the killers discovered Campbell was in West Bromwich town centre in a hired Ford Fiesta car driven by his friend Rakesh Kumar. The trio hurried to the same venue in a stolen Audi Q5. When they spotted the car Campbell was in, Humza fired five bullets at it. Campbell died instantly when one of the bullets bounced off the dashboard and hit him in the head.
The three killers were later spotted by a witness laughing, smiling and appearing pleased with themselves as they dumped the Audi in another part of the town. Humza and Chauhan were arrested as they fled after abandoning the car while Rai was arrested in Belgium on January 8. Officers found the Smith & Wesson revolver, a sheathed knife and gloves in gardens near the dumped Audi, while DNA and fingerprint evidence linked the three men to the murder.
A jury found all three defendants guilty of the murder and detectives said there was no doubt they intended to kill or maim their victim.
See photos of the convicted men below.
RUMOR BUS 