Salford prison van escape gang jailed for armed ambush
An armed gang who crashed a car into a prison van to free two men have been jailed by Manchester Crown Court.
Stevie McMullen and Ryan MacDonald were being taken from a Merseyside prison to court in April last year when the ambush occurred in Salford.
McMullen, 32, from Salford was given a 25 year sentence. MacDonald, 20, of no fixed address, was jailed for 21 years.
Another 11 people involved in the escape, including a 64-year-old grandmother, were also jailed.
MacDonald and McMullen were being transported from HMP Altcourse in Fazakerley, Liverpool, on 30 April when the prison van was rammed by a car.
In the car were Nathan Chapman, Anthony Smith, Matthew McGivern and a fourth as yet unidentified person, Greater Manchester Police said.
Three men of the men, wearing black balaclavas and armed with a double-barrelled shotgun, an axe and a sledgehammer, charged at the van.
Chapman, 25, from Pendleton, was sentenced to 10 years for conspiracy to escape lawful custody and possession of an imitation firearm.
Smith, 21, of no fixed address, was jailed for 10 years for the same offences.
McGivern, 32, from Agecroft, was sentenced to 13 years for conspiracy to escape lawful custody and a drug charge.
McMullen was re-arrested by police when a car was stopped on the A6 in Galgate, Lancashire, on 5 May 2013.
His 25-year sentence included 14 years for conspiracy to rob, 10 years for conspiracy to kidnap and four years for an arson charge.
MacDonald, of Allen Dale Walk, was captured on 10 May last year in a police raid on a house in Salford.
The judge ordered his sentences of six years for conspiracy to escape lawful custody and seven years for conspiracy to possess an imitation firearm should be added to a term of seven years and 10 months he was already serving.
Paul Taylor, 24, of no fixed address, was jailed for five years and four months for conspiracy to escape lawful custody.
Taylor was arrested by Spanish police in Benidorm in March, and extradited to the UK.
Karla Withers, 29, from Ordsall was jailed for four and a half years for conspiracy and firearms charges.
Marcus Hill and Michael Crossley assisted McMullen while he was on the run by driving him from Bolton to Lancaster, police said.
Hill, 28, from Little Hulton, was jailed for 28 months, Crossley, 26, from Farnworth, for 16 months.
Stephen Wilson and Michael Morrison, both 18 and from Salford, were sentenced to five and a half years and 40 months in a youth offenders institution for conspiracy to escape lawful custody.
Mavis Chapman, 64, from Ordsall was jailed for 15 months for perverting the course of justice.
Ainsley MacDonald, 21, was jailed for 15 months for encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence.