On the evening of the 21st of August 2001, Jason Martin Smith sat alone in his car on a quiet street in Hastings.

He was watching every passing vehicle. He knew he was in danger.

He'd fallen in with the wrong people, said the wrong things to police,

and now he was being hunted. Jason was so frightened that night that he armed himself.

He had a chisel shoved down his trousers and a gun within reach. This is Red Run. Stories about the true victims of crime.

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Our case today begins with a man called Jason Martin Smith.

He was born in December 1972 in the southwest of London in the

borough of Kingston upon Thames. When he was 27 he moved to Hastings in East Sussex. Hastings

is this really lovely seaside town on the south coast of England and for our our listeners across seas, it's around two hours away from London.

Jason frequently split his time between Kingston-upon-Thames and Hastings.

He would often go back and forth within a week.

Jason had worked at Price Attack pawnbrokers in Farnborough for a short time, but really his work,

or the way he made money, came from connections to a group involved in burglaries and drugs

in Hastings and the surrounding areas. It was during one cold winter's night, when a drug deal was taking place that Jason met a man called Mark Searle.

And the pair began chatting and pretty immediately an opportunity came up.

It was an illegal one but it was going to potentially make them both a fair chunk of money.

Jason agreed he would provide keys to the pawnbrokers where he worked

and then Mark and two other men, Frank Torpey and Jimmy Millen, would burgle price attack.

As far as Jason knew, this would be his only involvement. It was pretty hands-off in terms of him

not actually having to be there, but he was going to receive a substantial fee for his very

necessary part in the scheme. But on the night of the burglary, Jason was threatened into having a much bigger role.

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