A 32-year-old man has pleaded guilty to four firearms offences after a converted pistol was found hidden in a lift shaft in Southwark.
Dwayne McIntosh-Wisdom appeared at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Tuesday via video link from Thameside prison, where he admitted possessing a prohibited firearm and ammunition without a firearm certificate, and possessing a firearm and ammunition while prohibited for life.
Judge Georgina Sharkey remanded him in custody. A date for his sentence has yet to be fixed.
The weapon, a Retay S2022 blank-firing pistol that had been converted to fire live bullets, was discovered in a bag with ammunition during routine maintenance at a property on New Kent Road on 26 March 2025.
Lift engineers called the police, and officers who attended noticed McIntosh-Wisdom nearby. He was detained and arrested on suspicion of possessing a firearm, then released on bail.
A forensic examination later matched his DNA to the trigger of the gun and to the bag it was found in. He was arrested again on Tuesday 15 September outside a gym close to his home in Hackney, where he had been working out.
Detective Constable Claire McNulty, of the Metropolitan Police, said: “Officers identified McIntosh-Wisdom early in the investigation.”
“But it took months of hard work and dedication before we could present irrefutable evidence that he had handled the gun,” she said.
“Through forensic work, relentless investigations and fearless proactive interventions, we are taking the fight to those who cause serious violence, fear and intimidation across London.”
McIntosh-Wisdom has been before the courts over guns before. At the age of 17, he was jailed with a minimum 10-year tariff for assisting an offender by hiding a sub-machine gun for older members of the London Fields gang, a weapon that had been used in a spate of gang shootings.
At that sentencing, the judge told him: “You have not accepted, in terms of remorse, any responsibility for your behaviour.” The Old Bailey also heard that what was described as his misguided loyalty to the gang had led to him being involved in several fights while in custody.
What being prohibited for life means
Two of the four counts McIntosh-Wisdom admitted relate to possessing a firearm and ammunition while prohibited for life. In general terms, a person subject to a life prohibition under firearms legislation may not possess firearms or ammunition at all, and doing so is itself a criminal offence, separate from the question of whether they hold a certificate.
The remaining two counts concern possessing a prohibited firearm and possessing ammunition without a firearm certificate. The court will deal with all four counts together when he is sentenced.
Converted blank-firing pistols
The pistol in this case began life as a blank-firing weapon, a type designed to fire blanks rather than live rounds. When such a weapon is converted so that it can fire live ammunition, it is treated in law as a prohibited firearm, and possession of it carries the same serious consequences as possession of any other banned handgun.
That distinction matters in cases like this one: it is not the original design of the weapon that decides the charge, but what it is capable of firing.
The guilty pleas come amid a Metropolitan Police crackdown on serious and violent crime. Figures cited by the Met put the number of firearms taken off the streets during 2025 at 676, which the force says is 74 per cent more than in the previous 12 months.
The case is the latest in a run of firearms matters to reach London’s courts, including the arrest of a man over a shooting in Woolwich and the sentencing of a gang behind a series of West End designer-store raids. A Battersea man was also convicted of manslaughter this week over the death of a pensioner he punched in Balham.
McIntosh-Wisdom remains in custody ahead of his sentence, the date of which has not yet been set.
