Driver denies being raid's getaway man
A man at the wheel of a car that allegedly took two masked friends from the scene of an armed raid on a Black Country bookmakers insisted: "I was not the getaway driver."
A man at the wheel of a car that allegedly took two masked friends from the scene of an armed raid on a Black Country bookmakers insisted: "I was not the getaway driver."
Ryan Graham admitted letting off the handbrake before they got into the silver Peugeot 206 but denied this was to ensure a speedy exit.
Bernard Linnemann, prosecuting, said: "You knew they had been up to no good and, like all good getaway drivers, you started the car moving and released the handbrake before the second person got into the car."
Ex-Highfields School pupil Graham, aged 19, of Hamble Road, Warstones, Wolverhampton, told Wolverhampton Crown Court yesterday: "I don't know why I did that. I was not the getaway driver."
Two masked raiders, one with a loaded handgun, escaped with £320 at William Hill, Penn Road, Wolverhampton, on August 4.
It is alleged Daniel Sedgwick and Cameron Wilkinson fled from the bookmakers down a footpath to The Fold, where Graham was waiting.
The car was seen by witnesses and the three defendants arrested in it 15 minutes later, a jury heard.
Graham admitted dropping off the other two defendants in the area shortly before the robbery but maintained he had not intended to collect them again until he got an unexpected mobile phone message.
He told the jury the pair ran to the car with their faces masked and hoods up.
Graham said he did not see them remove their tops in the car and to have failed to see one of them supposedly hide the gun in bushes as the car was stationary in Showell Lane, Lower Penn.
But he had seen them counting money, the court heard.
Graham told the jury: "I asked what had gone on when they got in the car but they wouldn't tell me. It was in my mind that they had robbed someone but I did nothing because it all happened so quickly."
Graham, Sedgwick, 19, of Rutland Avenue, Warstones, and Wilkinson, 18, of Myrtle Grove, Penn, deny robbery and firearms charges.
The trial continues.