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Crimewatch Caught (29th September 2025)
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00:01Hello, police emergency.
00:08Oh, please do me work!
00:21We'll work around the clock if it means putting criminals behind bars.
00:24It only takes that one mistake for us to catch you.
00:27Crime doesn't pay. You will be caught.
00:36Police forces across the UK are dealing with the devastating impact of drugs in their local communities.
00:43From small towns to large cities, dedicated officers investigate a raft of related crimes,
00:49from distribution gangs to rival attacks to murder in a bid to serve justice to those victims caught up.
00:562024, Gwent police have been called to the scene of a murder in the Welsh city of Newport.
01:05Lee was larger than life as a character.
01:18Exploded into rooms, loved by everybody that met him.
01:24Just noisy, boisterous, very funny.
01:35And it's very, very quiet now without him.
01:39He was my only child.
01:44In the last few years, he struggled with his mental health,
01:48which basically led to him sort of drinking too much,
01:54taking drugs, and he didn't have a lot of self-esteem.
01:59In the last sort of two months, he'd got a new job,
02:04was looking forward to finally getting himself sorted.
02:09Yeah, on the up again, really.
02:12The old Lee was coming back.
02:14The day that it all happened was a normal day.
02:23Lee went off to work.
02:24I went off to work.
02:26And I came home about quarter to five.
02:31And as I came to the front door,
02:35Lee was trying to get out of the front door
02:37because he couldn't find his keys.
02:39And off he went.
02:41That was the last time I saw him.
02:51At around 6pm on a Tuesday in May 2024,
02:55police received reports that a man had been stabbed
02:59in the Maindy area of Newport.
03:02Newport is a growing city.
03:05It's a city with the usual issues associated with major cities.
03:09However, it's not a place where we have many murders.
03:16On the 14th of May 2024, I received a phone call
03:21to say that there'd been a stabbing.
03:24And the ambulance crew were working on the victim.
03:28Paramedics worked for 45 minutes to resuscitate the man.
03:32The first thing that I wanted to do was obviously to get to the scene
03:35so that I could fully assess what was happening
03:38and exactly what we had.
03:39Despite the paramedics' efforts, the victim couldn't be saved.
03:45He was identified as 36-year-old Lee Crew.
03:49Lee was identified fairly quickly.
03:54There was a friend of his who was present.
03:57And so it was through contact with him
04:00that we could ascertain Lee's details.
04:03I got a phone call from one of his friends
04:08saying that he'd heard that they'd been a-stabbing
04:12and that it was Lee.
04:13So I asked him to take me down to where it was.
04:20And it was still not real.
04:26A police officer came over and asked his name
04:30and she'd confirmed that he'd been killed.
04:35Which is still so vivid.
04:43Lee was stabbed once to the right side of his chest.
04:47It was a single-stab wound that went in through his lung.
04:54You could see that there was blood on the road
04:56from the movements of Lee.
05:01In any investigation, we have what we call a golden hour inquiries
05:05and they are the fast-tracked initial inquiries
05:08that we need to complete in order to secure as much evidence
05:12as we possibly can.
05:13I'm Liam Young. I'm a detective constable.
05:16I work on the major incident team.
05:18We generally investigate complex crime.
05:23The suspect had fled the scene,
05:25so we were concerned that he would be trying to dispose of evidence
05:29or conceal evidence.
05:30We established that there weren't any witnesses to the actual stabbing.
05:37So what I decided was to focus on CCTV inquiries
05:41to try and establish what had happened.
05:44In an area like this area of Newport, there was a lot of CCTV cameras.
05:51So there were a lot of officers out on foot speaking to businesses
05:56and residents to try and get the key piece of footage.
06:00A few hours into the investigation, CCTV from the local area
06:04gave the team their first major breakthrough.
06:07Within that CCTV was a very poor quality, grainy image of the actual incident
06:14and the actual murder taking place,
06:16which actually showed the person we believed to be the suspect.
06:20You could see Lee crew backing away as our suspect approached him with the knife.
06:27You see the suspect withdrawing a knife from his clothing.
06:32You can see Lee stepping back and moving back away from him,
06:36but then the suspect moves forward and strikes him clearly with the knife.
06:42So it was literally just the contact from the knife that was made between the two of them.
06:47Police suspected the motive behind the stabbing may be related to a drug purchase,
06:53but with little physical evidence at the scene,
06:56they had to widen their trawl of CCTV.
07:00You could see on this footage that the blade was approximately the size of his forearm.
07:05As he ran past the camera, he had the blade still in his hand
07:08and as he ran away, it looked as though he'd tucks it up his sleeve to try and conceal it.
07:14We were able to get a picture of the clothing that he was wearing.
07:19It was a light grey tracksuit with a black stripe going down both sides.
07:23It was quite a distinctive tracksuit.
07:25Once we knew that we were looking for this light grey tracksuit,
07:28we were able to find some relevant CCTV footage from around the scene.
07:32One of the really key bits of footage was found at the shop.
07:3640 minutes prior to the stabbing, the suspect had entered that store and bought some items.
07:43And because he's inside the store with a really good shot of his face,
07:47we were able to capture exactly what he looked like.
07:51From this, we tracked his movement.
07:54And both before going into that store and afterwards,
07:57he was hanging around on the corner of Chepstow Road and Marriott's Place.
08:03From the investigation, it was established that he was their drug dealing.
08:09From those really clear pictures, we were able to say that
08:14that was almost certainly the same person that had done the stabbing.
08:17By the end of the first day of the investigation,
08:22we already had a really good image of the male who we believed to be a police killer.
08:28Using this image, the team worked throughout the night,
08:32continuing to analyse CCTV footage in order to catch a lead on the suspect.
08:37Their diligence was rewarded the next morning.
08:41There was a police inspector who was doing some research on knife crime.
08:45She had cause to look at the CCTV of the incident
08:50and was able to identify the male who was responsible for the stabbing.
08:56So we identified the suspect as David Sisman,
09:01a male of 21 years of age.
09:05I think the fact that we'd identified him within 24 hours
09:09is just testimony to the efforts and work that the team did.
09:13Although they had identified their suspect,
09:16they now had to find and arrest him before he could commit any further acts of violence.
09:22In 2021, just 15 miles west of Newport, in the Welsh capital of Cardiff,
09:32detectives are dealing with their own drug-related operation.
09:36Months of covert planning and persistent surveillance
09:40is about to uncover a large-scale drugs gang.
09:49This operation started with one man
09:52but ended up with an organised crime gang serving over 100 years in custody.
09:58Tarrion are the regional organised crime units based in southern Wales.
10:12They are responsible for disrupting and dismantling organised crime.
10:17Operation Solidargo led by Tarrion was an investigation into widespread drug distribution.
10:28The operation was focused on a man named Tufial Akhtar,
10:33who was well known to police in Cardiff.
10:36He's a queer criminal
10:38and we know that he'd been in prison for other drug-related offences.
10:42In 2021, surveillance police officers started watching Akhtar's every move
10:49to build a picture of his involvement in the drug-related crime group.
10:54The officer who led on surveillance cannot be identified for operational reasons.
10:59I'm a detective constable
11:01and I spent around four months following Tufial Akhtar.
11:07We were quite aware of just how busy he was with respect to drug supply
11:11and it really didn't take very long, a matter of weeks,
11:14before he gave us an opportunity to witness him being hands-on with some drugs.
11:24On the 24th of August 2021, Tufial Akhtar was spotted entering a property in the Roath area of Cardiff.
11:33He left an hour later carrying a black and white bag.
11:41But suspicious that he was being watched, he attempted to throw anyone who might be watching him off the scent.
11:48He's conducted a period of anti-surveillance, so he's driven around in circles.
11:54He's got out on and gone for a walk and got back to his car and then drove a little bit further
11:58and he's ended up on Trafalgar Road in Roath.
12:01And then moments later, a black Astra arrives and it parks nose-to-nose with Tufial Akhtar's car.
12:11Then a Ford Ranger arrives in the street.
12:15The two individuals get out of there.
12:18One of them stands on the corner and just spends time looking up and down the street.
12:22And then the other boy, who was the driver, walks towards Tufial Akhtar's car.
12:28And he gets in for a short time.
12:32Gets out again with the bag and then he takes that and he hands it to the driver of the Astra
12:39through the open window.
12:41Instantly, the Astra drives out of the street, so we followed.
12:45He travelled onto the M4 towards West Wales.
12:48Police stopped the car 35 miles outside of Cardiff in Gorsainen.
12:53Inside, they recovered the black and white bag Akhtar had left behind.
12:57And that bag was found to contain one kilogram of cocaine of high purity.
13:05The driver of the Astra with the kilogram block of cocaine was identified as Grant Clarke.
13:11His phone was seized and interrogated, which allowed police to identify a third man,
13:18Ethan James, who appeared to be using Clarke as a courier to deliver large quantities of drugs.
13:25Ethan James was giving Grant Clarke instructions on where he was to go, who he was to meet
13:31and how much money he would receive for collecting the package on his behalf.
13:36Realising they were starting to unravel a large-scale operation,
13:41police kept Akhtar under surveillance to build up more intelligence on those he worked with.
13:47To fact, I wasn't arrested that evening because we believed he was the principal subject of a serious organised crime group,
13:55which is a big network and for us to be able to dismantle that group effectively,
14:00we need to do further investigation to see what his actual involvement was and where else coming to that picture.
14:06So we could see from this day alone that Tufal Akhtar had customers as far away as Llanethly in West Wales.
14:14This was a good indication of how busy he is and the quantity of drugs that he is selling.
14:22So waiting to pounce was actually a good move because it led us to identify further criminality.
14:31Over the coming weeks, patience paid off as the police witnessed meetings between Akhtar and suppliers in London.
14:41They also saw his girlfriend visiting a flat in Cardiff.
14:45And she can be seen carrying what looks to be a very heavy hold-all,
14:52takes it inside the flats and then returns out empty-handed.
15:03In November, officers arrested a taxi driver who had been couriering drugs from Akhtar between London and Cardiff.
15:11In the taxi, they struck gold.
15:13He was found to be in possession of nine blocks of wrapped heroin,
15:20disguised as goat's cheese.
15:24And when that was weighed, it was 4.5 kilograms of heroin.
15:29Following the taxi driver's arrest, Tufal Akhtar made 18 calls to him,
15:34clearly desperate to get hold of him and find out where his drugs were.
15:38We've built a really good picture now of Tufal Akhtar's criminal behaviour and the people he is associating with,
15:49his customer base, the people he uses to work for him, the people he works with.
15:54We've seen him engaged with drug dealers in the West Wales area.
16:00We've evidenced him to be involved in exchanges with drug dealers from the London area.
16:06He's shown to us that he's got quite a scale and it's wholesale amounts.
16:10Detectives had also found incriminating messages which suggested that another man, Mohamed Goth, was acting as his deputy.
16:20Mohamed Goth's address was a safe house for Tufal Akhtar's drugs.
16:29We've witnessed him actually going to the safe house.
16:33We were in a good position evidentially to be able to arrest Tufal Akhtar's monster suspicion of conspiracy to supply control drugs
16:41and confident that all the evidence we'd gathered throughout the investigation was enough to have him charged with that offence.
16:48This was a fast moving investigation and the associates around Akhtar were falling quickly and we were worried that eventually Akhtar would realise that the police were on to him.
17:04He visited the safe house of Goth's home address and on leaving we realised this along with the evidence we gathered already that it was a good opportunity to take out Akhtar.
17:15On the 14th of December 2021, Akhtar and Goth were arrested and search warrants for their addresses were executed.
17:27Wholesale amounts of cocaine, heroin and also a bulking agent that's used to convert cocaine into crack cocaine was recovered.
17:36At Tufal Akhtar's home address there was significant amounts of cash hidden in a wardrobe in a plastic bag.
17:43There was high value clothing belonging to him and his partner and then there was a significant amount of genuine Rolex watches.
17:56It is a good feeling when you found out that all your hard work has culminated in a really good result showing we were right about this individual.
18:07He is a danger to the communities and living an extremely lavish, lucrative lifestyle off the back of other people's misery.
18:21Having been arrested, they seem physically smaller, like they don't have the air of a drug dealer about them anymore.
18:33Tufal Akhtar was sentenced to 17 years and 6 months imprisonment for conspiracy to supply class A drugs and a further 8 years and 4 months for other offences.
18:46The rest of his gang received sentences ranging between 4 and 15 years imprisonment.
18:54I'm extremely happy with the sentence, extremely proud of the team to be able to say that an organised crime gang had over 100 years of custodial sentence and the principal subject had 17 years.
19:06There is a significant amount of time where they would be spending on bars.
19:11With every success comes more intelligence, more links to other organised crime groups.
19:16And it will never stop and we can just keep trying to dismantle and disrupt criminality as much as we can.
19:29Back in Newport, the family of 36-year-old Lee Crewe are struggling to come to terms with his callous murder.
19:36The impact it's had on myself and Lee's dad and all of the family is just, just, it's devastated our world. It just doesn't seem real.
19:51Lee was killed by a single stab wound to the chest in an area of the city known for drug dealing.
19:59Police are on the hunt for the suspect.
20:02In just 24 hours, detectives have identified him as 21-year-old David Sisman.
20:09Now, they need to find him.
20:11Once we've identified a suspect for an offence such as this,
20:14as the police forces various tactics that we can deploy in order to locate them, in order to affect their arrest.
20:24The morning after the murder, David Sisman went to work.
20:29We were also aware that he then went over to Bristol on a date.
20:34I do find it quite alarming that somebody who could murder somebody in the street in broad daylight
20:39could carry on, go to work the following day, go on a date then later that afternoon.
20:45That is generally unusual behaviour.
20:49Just 24 hours after the murder of Lee Crewe, detectives decided to strike.
20:54Using automatic number plate recognition and detailed digital analysis,
20:59they intercepted David Sisman on the motorway as he travelled back from his date in Bristol.
21:05We didn't know whether he had any further weapons with him.
21:09We didn't know how he was going to react, if he would try and escape.
21:13So we needed to make that arrest quickly, swiftly and safely.
21:18So we deployed a team of nine officers.
21:22There were three police vehicles involved.
21:24Sisman was arrested on the M32 coming out of Bristol.
21:28Mate, you are under arrest on suspicion of murder of Lee Crewe on Tuesday the 14th.
21:35Whilst the arrest was being made, I was baiting headquarters where the command unit was.
21:41You do not have to say...
21:43He was arrested on suspicion of murder and his reply was along the lines that he was worried about his car.
21:50Maybe given evidence, do you understand?
21:53But I'm worried about my car, I mean, I don't know.
21:57David Sisman's car was seized by officers and that was then examined by our crime scene investigators.
22:05As part of that examination, they took photographs of any articles and items within the vehicle.
22:12One of which was a dark colour tracksuit with a white panel on the inside of the leg.
22:17Little did detectives know how vital this piece of evidence would prove to be.
22:23On his arrest, Sisman was very cool and calm. He appeared to smirk.
22:30We then needed to transport him back to Gwent area and we would need to start the interview process.
22:36Sisman didn't provide any account as to his movements, what happened or anything about the incident itself.
22:48I think through most of his interview, he had his head on the desk, refusing to acknowledge or comment at all.
23:03Although detectives had Sisman in custody, they needed to find the weapon or link him forensically to have a watertight case.
23:12We were looking to try and recover the knife, recover the tracksuit and in so doing find some forensic evidence which would further link David Sisman to this stabbing.
23:23From the CCTV, we could see that there was a long knife that was used as the weapon to kill Lee.
23:30To recover that weapon was a main objective within the investigation.
23:37Just 20 minutes after the murder, an off-duty police officer, out for an evening stroll with his dog,
23:44saw someone matching Sisman's description and wearing a grey tracksuit down by the River Usk.
23:53When he came into work the following day, he asked a colleague who was involved with the case,
24:00was he wearing a light grey tracksuit?
24:02And when it was confirmed that he was, he submitted a statement about his sighting.
24:09This sighting proved crucial for the team, giving them a possible sight for the disposal of the weapon.
24:16We conducted searches throughout the whole route that we knew that he took.
24:25We searched an area of the river, but that was very difficult on there due to the tidal system.
24:32My working hypothesis is that it was discarded in the River Usk.
24:41Despite an extensive search, police still couldn't locate the weapon.
24:47And so CCTV evidence was now more crucial than ever.
24:51An officer located some CCTV footage of a male wearing a black tracksuit and a face covering.
24:58And it was at that point that I recognised that tracksuit was the same as one that I'd seen in CSI images,
25:05taken of what was found in David Sisman's vehicle after his arrest.
25:10And we connected together then that clearly he'd changed.
25:13He'd got into a second tracksuit.
25:15Police continued their painstaking trawl through hundreds of local CCTV cameras.
25:20Eventually, they found Sisman walking home on the same night as Lee Crewe was murdered.
25:26He was wearing the light grey tracksuit police believed he wore when he committed the murder.
25:31We did find CCTV footage from the end of the suspect's street,
25:36which showed the suspect entering his road wearing the first tracksuit
25:40and leaving his road wearing that second tracksuit, the one that was recovered in his vehicle.
25:46The same CCTV camera captures him later on coming back in the second tracksuit with a bag on his back.
25:56The footage showed Sisman walking along Constable Drive towards a woodland area underneath the motorway.
26:03What's key about that area is there's lots of fires where people have had kind of campfires under there.
26:11And we considered it's possible that he may later have burned some evidence.
26:15So it's our assumption that the first tracksuit was in that bag and that it was disposed of.
26:20Although police never recovered the light grey tracksuit that Sisman was wearing at the time of Lee Crewe's murder,
26:26the dark tracksuit that was found in the boot of his car and on the CCTV footage proved to be enough to connect him to the murder.
26:35So Sisman was in custody with us for four days and he was then charged with the murder of Lee Crewe.
26:42Sisman was remanded in custody then due to the nature of the offence and obviously the violence that was involved.
26:48The trial was on the 28th of October. He'd pleaded not guilty to the offence.
26:57He had admitted being responsible for stabbing Lee. What he'd said though was it was in self-defence.
27:04However, the jury decided that that was not the case. It was not self-defence and it was murder.
27:11I was in court all the way through. He showed no remorse.
27:21On the 28th of November, 2024, at Newport Crown Court, David Sisman was sentenced to life imprisonment to serve a minimum of 24 years.
27:36Her life since Lee has gone is devastating. It's just...
27:44He's never going to have children or a family. You can't really describe the emotions of how it makes you feel.
27:52It's just numbness, really.
27:57It is yet another tragic example of the consequences of carrying a knife and knife crime.
28:04Lots of young men, particularly who are involved in drug dealing, are carrying knives.
28:10So I think that this investigation as a whole has taken a dangerous person off the streets.
28:17And I hope that it does bring some solace to the family of Lee Crewe.
28:22I think it does bring mold custom stuff to the people.
28:26And it feels like a relative situation.
28:28That's been weird for us if we were there.
28:29What does that call amate?
28:30This is a real estate part of the world as an adult.
28:32A kind of a
28:47viewpoint of a real Spacewand cameraattern.
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