Locked up in Sussex: These are some of the criminals jailed in February
Three life sentences were handed out in Sussex last month for murders both pre-meditated and impulsive.
By John Holden
Published 3rd Mar 2021, 16:23 BST
Thieves, a kidnapping and sexual assault also led to imprisonment for these criminals. All information here is taken from Sussex Police or from our reporters covering court proceedings in person.
9.
Luke French, 28, of Morley Grove, Harlow, Essex was sentenced at Lewes Crown Court on January 26 to two years and four months imprisonment having admitted supplying heroin and crack cocaine, and money laundering. He had been arrested at the Ashdene Service Station on the A21 after a joint investigation by Sussex, Surrey and Metropolitan Police officers on the evening of November 3 last year. Analysis of his mobile phone found him to be running a County Drugs line from the Cambridge area.
10.
Gerald Burton, 64, from Worthing, has been jailed after breaching his Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO). Burton, of no fixed address, was given the order in May after persistent offending including antisocial behaviour and being drunk in public. It prohibited him from the following for a period of 24 months: Consuming alcohol in a public place other than licensed premises; being drunk or in a state of drunkenness in any public place in Sussex; behaving in anyway causing or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to any person; laying on a public foot path or highway in Sussex (that is sitting or laying on a pavement or road not on a seat or bench); having an open container of alcohol in your possession, in a public place in Sussex, other than in a licenced premises; calling emergency services or NHS Direct, for medical advice or aid or encouraging by your actions or words, anyone else to do so on your behalf, including staff at NHS Direct, save when in genuine need of emergency services requiring immediate
11.
Frank Skipwith, 81, now of Eynsham, Oxfordswhire, who was the ex-headmaster of a long-closed West Sussex school, has been sentenced to a total of eleven years imprisonment for a series of sex offences against boy pupils there and in Berkshire. Skipwith was convicted on December 15, 2021 at Hove Crown Court, after an eight day re-trial, of indecent assault against two boys under 14 at Fernden preparatory school near Midhurst, between 1981 and 1985. He was also convicted of three counts of indecent assaults on a boy pupil under 14 in 1993 at Crosfields School in Reading where he was Head Teacher at that time. He was sentenced at Hove Crown Court on Monday, January 31. Skipwith had first been convicted on March 13, 2020 at Lewes Crown Court after a seven-week trial, of 17 indecent assaults against ten boys then between eight and 14-years-old at Fernden between 1981 and 1985. The jury in that trial failed to agree on verdicts in relation to charges involving the two other boys at Fernden, of which he has now been
12.
Robert Brown-Percival, 50, of Colonnade Gardens, Eastbourne, has been given a prison sentence for sexually assaulting a woman at a flat where he previously lived in Worthing nearly eight years ago. Brown-Percival was given a 28-month sentence at Lewes Crown Court on Wednesday, February 16, having admitted at a previous hearing the sexual assault on the 21-year-old woman when she had visited his flat in Eriswell Road, Worthing, one night in July 2014. Brown-Percival will also be a registered sex offender for ten years.