Police made the alarming discovery while they were investigating the pensioner for sex offences
David Johnson outside Liverpool Crown Court(Image: Liverpool Echo)
A 77-year-old man was caught with a bounty of 13 antique guns when police came knocking at his door. Officers made the alarming discovery while investigating David Johnson for sexual offences.
The pensioner’s haul of firearms consisted of a total of nine muskets, as well as three pistols and a revolver. While these items were not in themselves illegal due to their age, he was previously banned from keeping such weapons for life due to an earlier conviction for an appalling knifepoint rape.
Liverpool Crown Court heard this afternoon, Wednesday, that police executed a search warrant at Johnson’s home on Mill Lane in Wavertree on May 28 last year. This saw officers seize three mobile phones and two associated storage cards which contained a total of 1,528 indecent images of children.
Nardeen Nemat, prosecuting, described how this sickening haul included 858 videos and 251 photographs in category A, those showing the most serious forms of abuse against girls aged as young as four. A further 412 films and 206 pictures were graded as being category B, with 262 movies and 129 still images in category C also being detected.
Johnson was meanwhile found to have collected five extreme pornographic images, involving sex acts with horses and dogs. The PCs then went on to discover the host of firearms across the defendant’s living room and bedroom.
This collection consisted of two double-barrelled self-loading pistols, a single-barrelled pistol, a revolver, a Martini-action musket, two converted muskets, a double-barrelled musket and five further muskets. None were ultimately test fired due to their age and the unavailability of compatible ammunition, although an expert determined that there was “nothing mechanically to stop the firearms from working”.
Some were assessed as remaining in “good condition”, although others were found to be in a poor state of repair. All of these guns were manufactured prior to 1939, meaning that they can be legally possessed without a certificate for the purposes of “curiosity or ornament”.
However, Johnson is prohibited from keeping such firearms due to his previous conviction for rape in 1997. This related to him grabbing a stranger from behind as she walked home, holding a knife to her face and dragging her to a secluded area before forcing her to strip and sexually assaulting her, later being jailed for seven years after he was linked to the incident via his DNA.
Johnson, who was represented by Holly Menary, admitted to 13 counts of possession of a firearm when prohibited, possession of indecent images of children, three charges of making indecent images and possession of extreme pornographic images. Walking with the aid of a stick and sporting glasses, he was handed a 24-month imprisonment suspended for two years.
David Johnson outside Liverpool Crown Court(Image: Liverpool Echo)
Judge Simon Medland KC also ordered him to complete a rehabilitation activity requirement of up to 20 days and fined him £1,000. Johnson was given a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and told to sign the sex offenders’ register for the next decade.