It’s pretty common for children to be messy, noisy and downright annoying at times. But it’s perhaps not so common for them to be branded as criminals.
Well, the youngest-ever person to receive an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) when he was just age 10 has now gone on to be jailed for attempting to take over a drug gang.
Alfie Hodgin, now 18, was found by police on 14 July with over £2,000 worth of heroin and crack cocaine on his person whilst lying in a pool of his own blood.
The Merseyside teen was treated in the hospital for his injuries, which were believed to be caused by gang members’ machetes before he was arrested.
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After being found with £1,220 of heroin, £1,100 of crack cocaine and £1,208 worth of cash, as well as a burner phone on him, he later admitted possession of drugs with intent to supply, and being concerned with the drugs' supply.
Following his previous ASBO, the teen had been ordered to work to pay off a debt. However, Hodgin refused to pay the order and stole the gang members’ phone in an attempt to take over their operation.
The four men then attacked him with the weapons in Ellesmere Port, a jury heard.
A judge at Liverpool crown court has now jailed him for two and a half years.
Hodgin remains one of the youngest people ever to receive an ASBO, for ‘terrorising the community’ in his childhood in 2014.
He received his first conviction age just age 13 for theft, criminal damage, assault and being in breach of his order.
He was then jailed for the first time in 2019, for being in possession of a bladed weapon.
Just one month prior, his older brother John, who was age 14 at the time, had also received an ASBO.
Despite being remarkably young when he received his first order, Hodgin certainly isn’t the only youth to be in a similar position.
A report two years ago detailed how a seven-year-old boy is Britain's youngest person to be held for drug dealing.
The child, from West Yorkshire, was held for possession with intent to supply an unspecified narcotic, and his arrest was recorded and social services were informed.
However, as he was under the age of 10 - which is the legal age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales - he could not be charged.
LADbible has contacted Merseyside Police for comment.
Gabriella Ferlita