Carl Mercer was so terrified of the gangsters he stashed a gun for that he called the police on himself
The Grand Power K100 pistol found linked to shootings in Waterloo and Seaforth(Image: Liverpool Echo)
A drug dealer was so terrified of gangsters who forced him to stash their gun that he chose to hand himself in to police clutching a bag of heroin. Carl Mercer was said to have been manipulated into minding the deadly weapon for thugs too streetwise to risk keeping it in their own homes.
Mercer, then 46, was clearly more afraid of those responsible for carrying the gun than the police and rang 999 and told the operator he was under threat from people making him deal drugs. And when responding officers arrived outside his Longfield Road home in Bootle, Mercer tried to get into their car and begged to be arrested.
The bizarre incident lifted the lid on what life is really like for those who are threatened and exploited into doing the bidding for crime groups who believe they can act with impunity on our streets.
And the arrest of Mercer also set about a chain of events which would ultimately tie the gun to a local shooter. However, police inaction meant he was not arrested until he had murdered an innocent man in the kitchen of his family home. As part of a weekly series looking at Merseyside’s criminal history, the ECHO has taken a closer look at the case of Mercer.
When officers arrived at Mercer’s home on November 2, 2019 he was described as distressed and anxious and pleading for help. He even produced a bag of heroin to ensure he was taken away to safety, but not before his home was searched. The search yielded nearly £7,000 in cannabis, scales and plastic snap bags.
But more importantly, officers also found a semi-automatic pistol, with 29 rounds of 9mm ammunition. The Slovakian-made, Grand Power K100 self-loading weapon was secreted away with live bullets in his kitchen drawer. However, only one of these bullets could actually be fired from the self-loading weapon, despite it being a 9mm calibre gun.
The bag of ammunition found in Carl Mercer’s kitchen drawer(Image: Liverpool Echo)
The gun was found to have initially been decommissioned in Slovakia, but then modified, and was twice successfully test fired by police, despite bullet cartridges not ejecting from the chamber correctly.
When Mercer appeared in court, a prosecutor said: “The defendant said he got himself into a drug debt, he found himself in a position where he owed his dealers a large amount of money and they forced him he said to bag up cannabis in his property and they also attended at his address with the gun and the ammunition. He said he was forced to do that.”
Possession of a firearm carries a minimum five-year prison sentence. The sentencing powers that Mercer undoubtedly knew he would face throw into sharp relief how desperate he must have been to call the police.
Mercer had been addicted to hard drugs since his youth and had progressed from a user to a dealer. His criminal record showed convictions for dishonesty and drugs, including a stretch for cocaine, heroin and cannabis dealing, production of cannabis and abstracting electricity.
Carl Mercer, previously of Longfield Road, Bootle(Image: Liverpool Echo)
He was part of a gang operating across Sefton, including in Southport, Seaforth and Waterloo. But his position in the hierarchy was well down the chain. The gang was eventually broken up by undercover police as part of Operation Hendon, who convinced young drug runners to hand out the numbers for their dealing “graft” phones and discussed buying “lemo” and “flake”.
Following his release from prison Mercer soon fell back into his own ways and again became easy prey for the vultures living off the misfortune of others. His sentencing heard Mercer “found himself in a position where he owed his dealers a large amount of money and they forced him he said to bag up cannabis in his property and they also attended at his address with the gun and the ammunition”.
Mercer refused to give names and entered a basis of plea stating he was coerced into minding the gun and bullets. He was jailed for six years in February 2020.
South Sefton saw at least 18 shootings in 2019 alone as feuding gangs targeted each other and houses linked to their rivals. Among those previously jailed in Operation Hendon was Michael Foy, then aged 18. By 2019 Foy had worked his way up the ranks from street dealer to embedded member of the Linacre Young Guns, who were waging an armed war on the streets of Bootle, Seaforth, Litherland and Netherton.
James Foy (left) and older brother Michael were convicted of the murder of Michael ‘Mikey’ Rainsford(Image: Merseyside Police)
On April 7, 2020 Foy and his brother James carried out a revenge attack against 20-year-old Mikey Rainsford, shooting him in the back through his own kitchen window after a brick had been thrown through their mum’s window just an hour earlier. Mr Rainsford had no involvement in gang crime or in the brick incident.
The Foys were arrested and charged with Mr Rainsford’s murder. But following an extensive personal campaign by Mikey’s dad, Michael Rainsford Snr, who sadly died this year, it was revealed police had “missed an opportunity” to arrest at least James Foy, the man who pulled the trigger, the previous year.
Forensic reports exclusively reported by the ECHO showed DNA from James Foy was “fully represented” on the firearm found in Mercer’s home. Merseyside Police told Mr Rainsford’s inquest that because the DNA was pulled from a removable part of the gun there was insufficient evidence to charge James Foy at the time.
But the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said: “Having reviewed the available evidence, it is my view that there does not appear to be any reason provided that justifies why the arrest [of James Foy] could not and should not be made prior to the murder.”
The Grand Power K100 was not used in the shooting of Mr Rainsford. But it had been used in at least two incidents on the street of Sefton. The case of Mercer and the Foys showed the devastating threat organised crime groups pose by terrifying people into doing their bidding.