Boxing champ Luke Atkin jailed in absence after fleeing abroad

Luke Atkin, of Lower Walton, was a member of an organised crime gang that was collectively handed 54 years behind bars over a drug supply conspiracy.

The cocaine network, based in York and Tadcaster, was taken apart during a large-scale operation by North Yorkshire Police’s organised crime unit.

Officers seized huge hauls of class A drugs worth more than £50,000, with seven defendants jailed at Bradford Crown Court for conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

Another sentence is to follow, and one defendant was locked up at a previous hearing.

During 2022 and 2023, the defendants conspired to sell vast amounts of class A drugs on North Yorkshire’s streets.

Gavin Tuohey, aged 46 and of Tadcaster, was the head of the organised crime gang and would source large quantities of cocaine for onward supply to others further down the supply chain.

He was stopped and arrested by police as he travelled from Leeds to Tadcaster in a taxi, carrying a kilogram block of high-purity cocaine with a street value of up to £43,000 in his rucksack.

Luke Atkin, of Warrington, remains on the run

Text messages recovered from mobile phones showed that Tuohey would threaten and intimidate other members of the gang when they did not pay their debts for the cocaine he had supplied.

He was sentenced to nine years and three months in prison.

Luke Atkin, aged 37 and of Camberwell Drive in Lower Walton, was a regular drug customer of Tuohey’s and another downstream supplier of cocaine.

He lived in Warrington during the conspiracy period but made regular journeys to Tadcaster and York to meet other gang members and deal drugs.

Atkin, a former world champion bare-knuckle boxer, informed the court he would not be attending on the first day of trial and flew out of the UK.

He was convicted in his absence and North Yorkshire Police believes that he could be in Thailand, with a warrant remaining outstanding for his arrest.

Atkin was sentenced in his absence to ten years in jail, and anyone who knows of his whereabouts is urged to report it to the police, or anonymously to Crimestoppers, quoting incident number 12240074511.

Rhys Morgan, aged 26 and of Tadcaster, was jailed for eight years for being Tuohey’s sidekick and regularly attending the ringleader’s home.

Luke Atkin is a former world champion bare-knuckle boxer

He deputised for Tuohey when he was on holiday and used a relative’s address as a stash house for drugs, situated in the row of terraced houses directly behind Tuohey’s home.

Jamal Lazrak, aged 29 and of no fixed address, was one of Tuohey’s top contacts at the time.

The 29-year-old, jailed for eight years and three months, made numerous quick-turnaround journeys between York and Tadcaster in two black Volkswagen Golf cars.

Tuohey took one of the Golfs from Lazrak temporarily as a debt repayment, with the latter supplied with quantities of cocaine that could be broken down further for onward supply.

Max Haigh, aged 23 and of York, a drug dealer who detectives linked to a number of addresses connected to the investigation, was handed six years and four months behind bars.

Meanwhile, 27-year-old Olivia Heppell was also used to carry drugs in quick-turnaround journeys between her home city of York and Tadcaster.

She admitted being a driver for an organised crime gang member on frequent trips to collect cocaine and deliver drugs money, but was handed a two-year jail sentence, suspended for two years.

At a previous hearing, Luke Jenkins, aged 33 and of Leeds, was handed a 10-year jail term for his role in the conspiracy after his fingerprints were found on packaging.

Clockwise from top left: Rhys Morgan, Gavin Tuohey, Jamal Lazrak, Olivia Heppell and Max Haigh

Another defendant is due to be sentenced at a later date after police arrested him and found drugs with a potential street value of almost £6,500 secreted in his underwear.

A 33-year-old man was charged in connection with the conspiracy and pleaded guilty but died before he could be sentenced.

The sentence was welcomed by DC Leah Kitchen, of North Yorkshire Police’s organised crime unit.

She said: “This was a large and detailed investigation that led to an organised crime gang being dismantled.

“In doing so, we have stopped tens of thousands of pounds of high-purity class A drugs from hitting the streets.

“The key players have received significant prison sentences that reflect the seriousness of their crimes, which also take them out of circulation for a number of years.

“This can only be a good thing for communities in Tadcaster and York.”