Police bodycam footage shows arrest of man jailed for firearms offences

After Durham Constabulary received information that John James Macleod had a stock of potentially lethal weapons, armed officers swooped on his home in Great Lumley, near Chester-le-Street, in September last year.

Macleod, then aged 26, was detained in a garden shed, where police also discovered seven cannabis plants.

Search teams uncovered four firearms and 85 rounds of ammunition inside the address, in black bin bags sealed with masking tape.

The haul included a double barrelled sawn-off shotgun, a Llama self-loading pistol, a revolver and a paintball gun converted into a viable automatic weapon, 43 live 9mm bullets, 25 shotgun cartridges and a magazine of ammunition.

Macleod, of Sevenacres, in Great Lumley, admitted a string of firearms offences and appeared before Durham Crown Court last week where he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.

PC Andrew Stephenson, from West Durham CID, said: “As soon as we received information that guns and ammunition were stored at the address we acted swiftly and decisively to deal with the threat.

“Durham has traditionally been an area with very low levels of gun crime, but all the firearms we recovered were potentially lethal.

“It was clear we needed to get these weapons safely off the street as quickly as possible.

“We are pleased with the sentence, which gives a clear and unambiguous message anyone caught with illegally-held firearms will face the full weight of the law.”