Four Men Jailed After Shot Fired at Crowded Greenford Restaurant

Lord Patten's son-in-law among those convicted

Clockwise from top left: Elton Charles, Nicholas Grant, Nathanial St Aimie and Lee Morgan

September 19, 2023

The four men believed to have been present when a shot was fired into a restaurant in Greenford crowded with diners including children last year have been jailed.

The gunman, 46-year-old Nicholas Grant of no fixed abode, fired a single cartridge from a sawn-off shotgun at the window of the Punjabi Kitchen restaurant on Greenford Road on the evening of 6 September 2022. The glass shattered but nobody was injured.

Officers from Specialist Crime gathered hours of CCTV from the nearby area which showed Grant getting out of a white van, but no number plate was visible. The team eventually identified the van’s registration plate, which linked it to a van hire company.

Further work led to detectives finding out that 49-year-old Nathanial St Aimie, of MacMillan Way, Tooting had rented the van two months previously, with GPS data showing it had returned to his home address shortly after the shooting took place. Enquiries then revealed that St Aimie, using a burner mobile phone, had carried out reconnaissance of the restaurant the day before the incident, and then arranged for his co-defendants to become involved in the shooting. As well as grant these included 42-year-old Lee Morgan, of Waterside Court, Leybourne, and 50-year-old Elton Charles, of Liddell Gardens, Kensal Rise who owns a property management company and is married to the daughter of Lord Patten of Barnes.

WhatsApp messages and data recovered from the defendants’ phones showed they had arranged to meet up and were in the area at the time of the incident, with financial gain being the motive for the shooting which was intended to intimidate the restaurant’s owner.

In mitigation Charles claimed that he was unaware that a shooting was going to take place and that he had gone to Greenford to meet his half-brother to get cannabis from him.

Morgan, Grant and Charles were found guilty of conspiracy to possess a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence following a five-week trial at Kingston Crown Court in July and August 2023. Laura Patten was present in court to hear the verdict on her husband of thirty years with whom she has three children.

At a hearing on Friday, 15 September, each of the three men were sentenced to five years in jail.

St Aimie, who is the half-brother of Charles, pleaded guilty of conspiracy to possess a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence on the second day of the trial and was sentenced on 15 September to six years and three months’ imprisonment.

Detective Constable Meechok Maingarm, who led the investigation, said, “This was a shocking attack and it was only by good fortune that no-one inside the premises suffered any injury. It left many of those present extremely shaken up and caused real fear to the restaurant’s owners.

“Our team worked exceptionally hard to identify those responsible, and the evidence collected was enough to prove that all four men were in touch prior to the incident and played their part in this deliberate and pre-planned shooting.”