Jason Furtado was one of a group of five men who killed two people they mistook for rival gang members in Archway (Picture: Metropolitan Police/PA Wire)
A gang member serving a life sentence for murdering two young men after mistaking them for rivals has had his sentence increased for battering a taxi driver in a separate attack.
Jason Furtado, 29, helped plan the ambush that saw Leonardo Reid, 15, and Klevi Shekaj, 23, stabbed to death at a music video shoot in Archway, north London, on the night of June 29, 2023.
He was jailed for at least 34 years at the end of a long-running trial at the Old Bailey.
But the killer was back in court on Thursday after pleading guilty to GBH with intent in relation to an attack on an Uber driver three months before the murders.
District judge Emma Deacon KC gave Furtado a consecutive three-year sentence for the attack at Wood Green Crown Court.
She told Furtado: ‘This was an explosive piece of violence from you against Mr Edwards without any proportion to the reality – which was that you were challenged by a taxi driver for banging on his windscreen.’
Furtado, who had been among a group of people inhaling nitrous oxide, had lashed out at Mr Edwards after he dropped off a passenger outside a club in Islington, north London, in March 2023 at around 3.30am.
The judge said Furtado ‘threw a gas canister at him and you hit him over the head with it’.
Mr Edwards fell to the ground but Furtado hit him multiple times, including to the head, and ‘stamped on his head at least twice’.
He then rolled from the pavement to the road.
Mr Edwards was then run over by a car driven by Furtado’s girlfriend Charlotte Sibley, the court heard.
Forensic officers in Elthorne Road, Islington, after the double murder (Picture: PA)
Furtado was jailed for at least 34 years (Picture: Metropolitan Police/PA Wire)
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Furtado had pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm (GBH) with intent while Sibley, 28, of Hackney, east London, had pleaded guilty to a charge of careless driving.
Prosecutor Martyn Bowyer said: ‘Mr Edwards remembers nothing until he woke up in hospital.’
Sibley was fined £750 and disqualified from driving for six months by the judge who said it was nothing short of “miraculous that he did not sustain injuries as a result of your driving”.
Sibley, who was three months pregnant at the time, later told police that a fight between some men had broken out and she was in a ‘frightened and confused state’ when she fled and drove over Mr Edwards’s leg.
The judge described Sibley’s driving as ‘utterly irresponsible’, involving an ‘unsafe manoeuvre’ and that the fight had stopped by the time she decided to drive away.
The judge told Sibley: ‘You had run over him. You must have felt something. You had driven over someone’s body.
‘In driving away, you were thinking of yourself.’
Sibley was also ordered to pay a statutory surcharge.
The prosecution said no evidence was being brought regarding an attempted murder charge against Furtado while not guilty verdicts were recorded in relation to allegations of assisting an offender and dangerous driving against Sibley.
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