Abdulrasheed Adedoja told the court he had never even heard of Plymouth before a drug boss asked him to collect money from the city
20:51, 10 Mar 2026Updated 20:52, 10 Mar 2026
Abdulrasheed Adedoja, of North Circular Road, London after his first appearance at Plymouth Magistrates’ Court (Image: Carl Eve/PlymouthLive)
A man accused of organising a driver to transport men who attacked Danny Cahalane with sulphuric acid told a court he had never even heard of Plymouth before he was asked by a drug boss to collect money owed.
Abdulrasheed Adedoja, of North Circular Road, London, told a jury at Winchester Crown Court he had no knowledge of plans to attack the Plymouth father-of-two, but admitted he lied during interviews with police because he was “scared and didn’t want to be labelled a grass”.
He said he answered ‘no comment’ to the majority of the questions asked of him by detectives, saying he was just a “young black boy from London – whenever we get arrested they automatically think we did it”.
The trial of nine people – seven men from London and three women from Plymouth – continued today (March 10) at Winchester Crown Court following a number of days of legal argument. Seven of the nine are accused of 38-year-old Danny Cahalane’s murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter.
Lead prosecutor Joanna Martin KC previously told the jury that Danny – who died on May 3, 2025, following an attack at his home in Lipson Road, Plymouth, in the early hours of February 21, 2025 – was a “drug dealer in Plymouth who owed a large amount of money to another drug dealer further up the chain of command”.
Winchester Crown Court in Hampshire(Image: Corin Messer)
Danny admitted to police he had also gambled with the profits, including money which was meant to have gone to a drugs boss, named in court as Ryan Kennedy, also known as ‘Frost’.
Giving evidence in his defence and answering questions from defence barristers as well as the prosecution Adedoja, aged 23, said he was “baffled” at being arrested on suspicion of being involved in a conspiracy to murder Danny Cahalane, telling the jury “it baffles me now”.
He said he was “shocked and appalled” when Kelvin Asante told him he had thrown acid over Danny, but repeatedly said he was only tasked by Ryan Kennedy/Frost with arranging for a car and driver to bring money back from Plymouth on that occasion.
Nigel Edwards KC, barrister for another of the accused, Brian Kalemba, asked Adedoja about his former friendship with Kelvin Asante, who is alleged to have thrown the acid at Danny, which later led to his death. Adedoja said they had known each other when they were younger, but as the years passed, their contact ended. He explained that he saw on LinkedIn that Asante had become an estate agent and he passed on his congratulations but did not get a reply.
Mr Edwards KC asked if this was a case of him congratulating “a boy made good from the hood – would that be fair?” to which Adedoja agreed.
Adedoja told the court he had been informed Asante’s phone was damaged and so whenever he had to contact him while he was in Plymouth he would call another person’s phone and it would be passed to Asante.
He insisted he was asked by Frost if he wanted to buy cannabis and that he was asked to organise a driver for the first trip to Plymouth on January 19, 2025, to collect it – and that he was planning to buy a kilo. He said he had no knowledge that there was any plan to kidnap Danny from The Quay, Oreston, on that date.
He also insisted that when he was asked by Frost to arrange for another driver to go to Plymouth a few weeks later in February it was to take Asante to collect money. He said did not believe that Asante could drive.
He insisted he had to arrange for Brian Kalemba – who was meant to be driving Asante around in Plymouth – to come back to London because he was fed up with sleeping in a car and his girlfriend was annoyed with him. Adedoja told the jury he “vividly remembers him [Kalemba] saying he’s got obligations in London”.
Danny Cahalane(Image: PA)
He added that he did not recall hearing Asante calling Kalemba a “pussy” for wanting to leave Plymouth and return home.
Questioned by prosecutor Joanna Martin KC, Adedoja admitted he offered up a mixture of “no comment” replies and lies when he was interviewed by police. He said that “at the time I was scared”, adding that he did not want police looking at his phone as they would see messages which showed he dealt cannabis.
He was reminded that in a statement he gave to police he said he had “no knowledge of any incident in Plymouth or anywhere else” and told this was a lie.
Adedoja replied: “I was scared and didn’t want to be labelled a grass” adding that he was worried that police would have thought he had “more involvement than I did”. He accepted that he did not have prior knowledge of the attack, but was only involved in arranging for people to be driven to Plymouth, and this was – as far as he was aware – only to either collect cannabis which he was going to buy or to collect money at the request of Ryan Kennedy.
He said during his interview with police: “In that moment I was just frightened, my head was all over the place. I was stuck between answering and not answering. I knew I had no involvement in the attack on Danny, but I knew I had involvement in organising a driver for money.”
Asked how saying this to police would have made him “a grass”, Adedoja replied: “When people speak in interviews, they’re automatically classified as a snitch.”
With regards to £460 going into his bank account from Ramarnee Bakas-Sithole, he accepted he replied “no comment” to the detectives’ questions about it and when he was asked if it was a “loan” he said it was a loan from Bakas-Sithole who was then giving it back. He went on to tell police he had known Bakas-Sithole for years, but did not ask him what the loan was for.
Ms Martin KC said that Adedoja was now telling the court this was money to go to Kalemba to pay him his expenses for his trip to Plymouth and for his return. Ms Martin KC said that what Adedoja had said to police was yet another lie, to which Adedoja told the court “I was stressed and I was scared. I’m a young boy, black, from London. Whenever we get arrested they automatically think we did it, no matter what, so I just thought to distance myself (from) this situation as far as I can.”
Abdulrasheed Adedoja(Image: Carl Eve/PlymouthLive)
The court heard that when the officers interviewing him suggested it was drug money going into his account, he replied that he told them “I’ve never even been stopped with a gram of weed”, which he now accepted was not true.
He also agreed he lied to police when he told them “I don’t sell drugs”.
Ms Martin KC read out Adedoja’s indignant retort to detectives during his interview: “I don’t know where you lot got this whole idea from. But you lot got one plus one and got to eleven. I swear down I was surprised I got arrested for conspiracy to murder, I was like ‘what the f***’ – conspiracy to murder?”
Adedoja said he was “baffled” when he was accused of conspiracy to murder, adding “it baffles me now”.
The 23-year-old accepted he dealt in cannabis and would make “a couple hundred pounds a week”. He agreed there were different levels of dealing and that in some circumstances violence would be used in the enforcement of drug debts, but said that he was not involved in such activity.
He admitted that he did buy drugs from Frost – who he knew also came from the Rockingham estate in London – and also sent people his way. He said that both of them left the estate, but that both of their mothers still lived there.
He claimed Frost had phoned him out of the blue and asked him how he was doing. He said Frost had said he had heard Adedoja had moved out of the Rockingham estate and that it was “s*** now”. He then allegedly told Adedoja that he needed someone to got to Plymouth to collect cannabis for him which he could then have cheap. Adedoja claimed that Frost told him he was “doing well for myself”.
He told the court when he asked how long it would take, he was told “five hours” which he balked at and refused. He accepted that if the journey was just an hour he would have done it.
Asked about how he knew Asante, he said that they had known each other at school in Year 10. He said he later lost contact with him in around 2023 but learned that Asante had left the Rockingham estate, moved into an apartment, had become an estate agent and that “he had gone fully legit”.
However, in answer to questions about whether he knew of any of Asante’s previous illegal activities, Adedoja claimed Asante had been arrested and allegedly received a suspended sentence for modern-day slavery offences.
Adedoja agreed that he had not had any contact with Asante or Frost from 2023 until he received the unexpected first call from Frost in January 2025 requesting a driver.
Drilled as to whether he knew the money he was being asked to arrange to be collected in February was a drugs debt, Adedoja said he did not know it was “owed” only that it had to be collected. Adedoja suggested it was possible it was not a drug debt, but that whoever had it in Plymouth was merely “holding it for him [Frost]”.
Adedoja denied that he had been in Plymouth on January 7 or January 8. He said he had not heard of Plymouth before he was asked to arrange for a vehicle to collect cannabis and “didn’t even know it [Plymouth] existed”.
He told the court he did not know Frost’s day-to-day business and was only focused on getting “a kilo of cannabis for cheap” from Frost on January 19, from Plymouth.
He said he had no knowledge of what went on that day, was unaware Asante, Arrone and Jean Mukuna were in Oreston where they allegedly attempted to kidnap Danny Cahalane and that he only told Asante to go back to Rockingham because he needed the cannabis which he had already promised to his own customers.
A total of nine defendants – seven men from London and two women from Plymouth – remain on trial, with seven of these accused of Mr Cahalane’s murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter, on May 3, 2025.
They are Paris Wilson, 35, of The Quay, Plymouth; Jude Hill, 43, of Wantage Gardens, Plymouth; Abdulrasheed Adedoja, 23, of Neasden, London; Ramarnee Bakas-Sithole, 23, of Islington, London; Israel Augustus, aged 26, of Tottenham, London; Isanah Sungum, 22, of Edmonton, London; and Brian Kalemba, 23, of Barking, London.
Five of the defendants are charged with the attempted kidnapping of Mr Cahalane on January 19 2025, at The Quay in Oreston, Plymouth. They are Adedoja, Bakas-Sithole and Wilson, along with Jean Mukuna, 23, and Arrone Mukuna, 25, both of Camden, London.
All – except for Jude Hill – are also charged with participating in criminal activities of an organised crime group, namely the supply of drugs including the enforcement of drug debts and profiting from the supply of drugs in which Ryan Kennedy played a leading role.
All nine deny the charges.
The trial continues
