Inside the savage £1m cocaine robbery that rocked the Salford underworld

A gang who carried out a daring and brutal cocaine robbery are now believed to be 'targets' behind bars.

Salford brothers Jason and Craig Cox joined forces with Liverpool gangster Richard Caswell to steal £1million worth of drugs in a meticulously planned armed raid. They stole the drugs from a stash-house used by one of the biggest crime groups in Merseyside.

The gangsters have since been locked up, though police are preparing for further potential retribution. Below, the Liverpool Echo's crime reporter looks inside the robbery plot that rocked Salford's underworld.

J oin our WhatsAp p Top Stories and Breaking News group by clicking this link .

Early one spring morning in 2020, with the UK still in the grip of the first coronavirus lockdown, a white van pulled up outside a semi-detached house in West Derby.

Inside the vehicle were three high-level drug dealers - the Cox brothers and Caswell - as well as low-level Cox henchman Benjamin Monks-Gorton. The group were armed with an axe and a machete and other weapons.

This was no ordinary break-in. Their target was a stash-house on Croxdale Road West, used by one of the biggest crime groups in Merseyside, a firm which had in fact supplied the three dealers with wholesale quantities of cocaine. The robbery nearly went to plan.

Monks-Gorton, described by Jason Cox as a "wool from Burnley", approached the front door in a high-vis jacket with a Covid mask covering his face, in an attempt to pose as a delivery driver. That ruse proved unnecessary as the door was already open, and the thugs rushed inside.

They were faced with a stunned father and son, and launched a savage attack. The older occupant was severely wounded, almost losing his arm which was slashed down to