A MAN who has admitted to assisting an offender lied to the police in a bid to keep his friends out of trouble, a court heard.

Morgan Tarrant has already pleaded guilty to assisting an offender and possessing a shortened shotgun without a firearm certificate in connection with the murder of Gurinderjit Rai, 41, who was found dead in a Ford Fiesta in Shepherds Farm Lane in Corhampton, on July 13, 2019.

Today (Friday) the cross examination of the 21-year-old continued at Winchester Crown Court.

The jury were told that in statements to police in 2019 and 2020 Tarrant did not tell officers that on the night that murder accused Corin Barlow allegedly gave him the shotgun believed to have been used in the shooting he was picked up by a friend and his girlfriend who drove him to a field where he hid the weapon inside a hut.

He said: “I was concerned that it was going to bring other people into it. I was concerned that it was going to affect their lives. You can understand that is quite frightening for someone.”

Barlow’s barrister James Newton-Price QC said that Tarrant only told officers after his ex-girlfriend’s father went to the police about the witnesses.

“You were found out because somebody else told the police. You didn’t come forward and say 'you need to correct that',” Mr Newton-Price said.

Mr Newton-Price claimed that Barlow gave the gun to Tarrant so he could go shooting and took his friends to the field to “show off that gun and have a go at shooting”. Tarrant disagreed.

When the gun was given to Tarrant he says it was in an Adidas bag until he removed it to cock the weapon in order to fit it into a hole in a wooded area in Whitchurch, near Basingstoke, where it was hidden.

Mr Newton-Price put it to Tarrant: “I am suggesting that you had taken that gun out of the Adidas bag, out of its cloth wrapping or t-shirt wrapping long before. The reason you had unwrapped it was to take it shooting.”

Tarrant replied: “That is also incorrect. It wouldn’t make any sense for me to take this gun when I have got free rein potentially.”

Tarrant was referring to others who knew who had newer guns that he could shoot with if he wished.

Mr Newton-Price continued: "Corin Barlow had been arrested on suspicion of murder and you were quite naturally worried about where that gun might have come from or what it might have been used for."

Mr Newton-Price argued that a conversation between Tarrant and Barlow about hiding the gun for £4,500 did not happen and questioned him as to why he had not asked Barlow for the money, which he believed was coming from Aston Hannis.

Tarrant told the court later: “My time working with Corin, Corin said multiple stories about the Hannis family who run the south of England in the drug and criminal organisation.

“I was told about Mark Hannis, Aston’s dad, I was told by Corin he is a pirate.

“He goes on ships with drugs and steals them and different weapons.”

Prosecutor Andrew Langdon QC asked Tarrant whether he was fearful to ask Barlow to “get lost” and refuse to hide the weapon.

He replied: “Definitely as I have got this idea of this man (Aston Hannis), I am being told about that this man has slaughtered someone.”

The court had previously heard that the drugs operation allegedly run by Hannis and Barlow had been robbed.

Giving evidence today James McCulloch, Barlow’s former work colleague, denied that he ever agreed with Barlow for drugs to be stored at his house in Sutton Scotney.

Mr Newton-Price said that Mr McCulloch had told Barlow that his house “had been turned over by intruders during the working day” in late May 2019 and “the safe that was in the house and the safe that was in the shed had been, I suggest, been taken out of the house and smashed up and broken into in the garden.”

Mr McCulloch denied that the incident had taken place.

Hannis, 29, of Leah Gardens, Eastleigh; Charlie Statham, 30, of Crescent Close, Oliver's Battery; Barlow, 41, from Horley, Surrey; and Paul White, 27, of Dyson Drive, Abbotts Barton, all deny murder.

Phillip Hodan, 43, of Longwood Dean Lane, Owslebury, denies participating in the criminal activities of an organised crime group.

The trial continues.