Hell-on-Sea: how a drugs gang took over a sleepy Devon town
Retired couples and a smattering of teenagers bunking off school watch the grey swell of the Channel under a pale winter sky. The gaudy amusement arcades of penny-pushers and flashing gambling machines are almost completely deserted. The bored-looking staff in the ice-cream parlours and takeaways gaze into their phones, waiting for customers.
Dawlish on the south Devon coast is everything you might expect of a seaside resort in February. Yet this ostensibly sleepy West Country town was the nerve-centre of a violent gang from the north-east who over a decade built a brutal drug empire worth at least £1m while also preying on vulnerable young women who fell under their spell.
Earlier this month, 13 gang members – who were known locally as the Geordies, even though the core of the group originated from Sunderland – were sentenced collectively to 105 years after a four-month trial at Bristol crown court. They were found guilty of flooding Dawlish and the adjacent seaside town of Teignmouth with cocaine and heroin brought in by drug couriers from larger gangs in Liverpool and Sunderland. Five members were also convicted of multiple rapes of three women.
The gang was led by self-proclaimed who boasted that it “ran the town”. Brooks, known as “Geordie Lee”, was sentenced to 25 years for 20 offences, including
