Gavin Grant (soccer player)

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Gavin Grant
Personnel
Surname Gavin Renaldo Grant
birthday March 27, 1984
place of birth London ,  England
size 180 cm
position Winger , striker
Juniors
Years station
Watford FC
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
2005 Tooting & Mitcham United (11)
2005-2006 Gillingham FC 10 0(1)
2006-2008 Millwall FC 4 0(0)
2007 →  Grays Athletic  (loan) 7 0(3)
2007 →  Grays Athletic  (loan) 16 0(2)
2008 →  Stevenage Borough  (loan) 14 0(7)
2008-2009 Wycombe Wanderers 10 0(0)
2010 Bradford City 11 0(0)
1 Only league games are given.

Gavin Renaldo Grant (born March 27, 1984 in London ) is a former English football player . Grant played for a number of lower-class English professional clubs from 2005 to 2010 before receiving life imprisonment in July 2010 for a 2004 murder .

Football career

As a 14-year-old student, Grant was accepted into the youth division of Watford FC , but released again at the age of 16. He then worked for the Tesco supermarket chain .

After he had scored 13 goals in 22 games for Tooting & Mitcham United in the Isthmian League at the beginning of the 2005/06 season , the professional club Gillingham FC became aware of Grant and provided him with a professional contract until the end of the season. For Gillingham Grant made ten appearances in Football League One and scored one goal, but his contract was not renewed at the end of the season. The striker, who weighs just 70 kilograms, found a new club with league rivals FC Millwall, based in the south of London . There he was only used sporadically and was awarded to Grays Athletic in the Conference National in January 2007 until the end of the season , a process that was repeated in September 2007. In early 2008 he came on another loan stay at the National Conference at Stevenage Borough . For the club he scored seven goals in 14 appearances, but the promotion round was missed by two points.

His expiring contract with Millwall was not renewed in the summer of 2008, Grant's next club were the Wycombe Wanderers in Football League Two . His coach there was Peter Taylor , under whom Grant had already played at Stevenage. Grant was used in the first twelve competitive games of the season before his past caught up with him in October 2008 and he was taken into custody. From the club's side, his absence was initially explained due to illness, later his absence was described as having private problems. His last position in professional football was the fourth division Bradford City from February 2010 , again his coach there was Peter Taylor.

Criminal past and conviction

Grant grew up in the London borough of Brent in Stonebridge , which at the time was a stronghold of crime and in which only a 225 million pound government investment program after the turn of the millennium was able to significantly reduce the crime rate. There were two murders in the Stonebridge area in 2004 and 2005 that Grant has been linked to. For the first time he had to answer before a court in 2007, but was acquitted of the charge of being one of three shooters in a murder in January 2005.

From October 2009 he had to answer for a murder committed in January 2004 at the Old Bailey . The case also attracted attention because for the first time a dark-skinned top informant ( supergrass ) was used, who had also already been convicted of murder and whose prison sentence for his statements was reduced from 16 to four years. The dubious credibility of the informant meant that the jury could not agree on a verdict and so the trial was restarted in July 2010. In this case, the informant was no longer used, instead the investigators relied on evaluations of cell phone data, which proved that Grant and an accomplice were at the crime scene at the time of the crime.

The court found him and one other defendant guilty of murder. According to the court, the two suspected the victim from the home of a friend, who was also convicted of conspiracy to murder, of stealing £ 20,000 in suspected drug money. The three defendants each received a life sentence, which does not allow a release until after 25 years at the earliest. Grant denied any involvement during the trial and referred to the murdered man as a "friend".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b guardian.co.uk: Gavin Grant: the footballer who couldn't escape his murderous past in a London drug gang (Aug. 1, 2010)
  2. ↑ tmufc.co.uk: Tooting & Mitcham United FC Archive - Isthmian League Division 1 (South) Season 2005/06
  3. ↑ Barry J. Hugman (Ed.): The PFA Footballers' Who's Who 2006-07 . Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh 2006, ISBN 1-84596-111-0 , pp. 165 .
  4. ↑ thisislocallondon.co.uk: Gavin Grant stood trial for murder of Jahmall Moore (July 26, 2010)
  5. ↑ Barry J. Hugman (Ed.): The PFA Footballers' Who's Who 2009-10 . Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh 2009, ISBN 978-1-84596-474-0 , pp. 169 .
  6. ↑ thetelegraphandargus.co.uk: Striker jumped at chance to rejoin Taylor (March 13, 2010)
  7. ↑ a b independent.co.uk: Footballer Gavin Grant guilty of gun murder (July 23, 2010)
  8. ↑ bbc.co.uk: Does black British 'supergrass' case represent a failure? (Dec. 24, 2009)
  9. ↑ a b dailymail.co.uk: They made him an offer he couldn't refuse: The fiasco behind Britain's first black supergrass (11 Sep 2010)
  10. ↑ guardian.co.uk: Footballer Gavin Grant jailed for life for gun murder (July 26, 2010)
  11. ↑ bbc.co.uk: Professional footballer Gavin Grant jailed for murder (July 26, 2010)
personal data
SURNAME Grant, Gavin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grant, Gavin Renaldo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1984
PLACE OF BIRTH London