An Ipswich man who sparked an armed police response after police received information that a man with a gun had gone into a house in the town has been jailed for 44 months.
Police were called just after 4.45pm on Friday, September 21 by a member of the public who believed someone at a house in Allenby Road was in possession of a firearm, Ipswich Crown Court heard.
Allenby Road, which is opposite the Hadleigh Road Sainsbury's supermarket in the west of the town, was cordoned off at both ends, with police asking the occupants of two houses to leave their homes.
James Logan was stopped by officers as he and his girlfriend tried to enter Allenby Road and when a house, where he had been staying, was searched a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun was found in the garden.
The weapon, which was wrapped in two plastic carrier bags, was hidden under a fence panel and five shotgun cartridges were found nearby wrapped in a t-shirt in a planter, said Hugh Vass, prosecuting.
Logan, 33, of no fixed address, admitted being in possession of a shortened shotgun.
Mr Vass told the court that the maximum sentence for the offence was seven years.
He said that after his arrest Logan had answered no comment to questions put to him in interview.
Kelly Fernandez-Lee, for Logan, who appeared via a prison video link, asked the court to give her client credit for his guilty plea.
She said she had no instructions from Logan concerning why he had the gun.
Sentencing Logan, Judge David Pugh said the property where the gun was found had been let to someone else and Logan had been staying there.
He said that as the barrel of the gun had been sawn off, it could not have had a lawful purpose.
The judge said there was no evidence before the court as to what use had been made of the gun because Logan had refused to answer questions in police interviews.
Logan had also not given instructions to his barrister about his reason for having the gun.
"Because there's no lawful use of this sawn-off shotgun the inference is that any such use would be unlawful," added the judge.
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