Lewis Enos (Image: Gwent Police)
Last Updated: 1 hour ago
A 35-year-old man who was locked up for threatening to shoot police officers with what they believed was a firearm is back in custody after failing to comply with the conditions of his post-sentence supervision.
Lewis Enos, of no fixed abode, was sentenced to 14 days’ imprisonment at Newport Magistrates’ Court after admitting a string of breaches, including failing to maintain contact with the probation service, missing required appointments, not living at an approved address, and failing to seek permission before staying elsewhere overnight. He was also ordered to pay £60 in costs.
The original offences
Enos had been released after serving a 51-week sentence imposed at Cardiff Crown Court last March for three counts of assaulting an emergency worker.
The court heard that during the early hours of Wednesday, October 23, 2024, officers searching for Enos confronted him on Chepstow Road in Newport at around 1.40am.
The confrontation
Prosecutor Bethan Evans described how Enos pointed a black object towards two officers, shouting: “I’ll shoot you!”
“The officers saw that the defendant had an object in his hand which was black and at the time the officers believed that black object was a firearm,” she told the court.
“The two officers then withdrew to their police vehicle.”
Moments later, two more officers approached in a separate vehicle. Enos ran alongside it with his hands raised and shouted: “I’ll f****** shoot you!”
“They also believed he had a firearm,” Miss Evans added. “Assistance was then sought from firearms officers and the defendant was apprehended a short while later and arrested.”
Not a firearm
When Enos was taken into custody, officers discovered the object he had been carrying was in fact a wooden item of some kind concealed inside a plastic bag.
Background
The court heard Enos, formerly of Coulson Close, Newport, had a previous conviction for assaulting an emergency worker two years earlier after kicking a police officer in the leg following a collision with a telegraph post.
His barrister, Matthew Comer, told the court that Enos runs his own grave cleaning business called Grave Concerns, and that his difficulties with the law stem from alcohol and cocaine misuse.
Sentencing ⚖️
Judge Paul Hobson said: “You pointed at them and threatened to shoot them, plainly intending them to believe that you had a firearm.
“It is in my view, a particularly serious example of assaulting an emergency worker.
“Police officers live day-by-day with the knowledge that they might be confronted by someone using a dangerous weapon.
“Deliberately making and intending to make an officer believe you’re armed in this way runs the risk of escalating things into a very dangerous situation as well as causing great fear and concern to the officers.
“One of them said that he felt his life in that moment was under threat.”
