Two crack cocaine dealers were found in a hire car ‘awash with cash and drugs’ after police spotted them doing a deal, a court heard.
Linsey Young and a 17-year-old male were pulled over by police in a Volkswagen Golf on Henry Street in Church at around 11.30am on April 3 this year.
When officers told the teenager he was going to searched, he shouted to Young from the passenger seat: ‘Drive, drive. Please drive’.
Burnley Crown Court heard how the teenager was found with £875.67 cash, a mobile phone, £150 worth of cannabis and a flick knife.
In the footwell of the car was a plastic package with 43 wraps of £10 heroin deals and seventeen £10 crack cocaine deals.
Officers also recovered £40 cash from the centre console and £480 from the glove box which belonged to Young.
Stephen Parker, prosecuting, told the court how paperwork was found relating to an address on Henry Street and when officers spoke to the owner of the property they ‘believed she was a drug user and seized her phone’.
The court heard that ‘comparisons’ were made between messages on her phone and the one belonging to the teenager.
Mr Parker said a ‘significant number were drug related’ and included the words ‘start orders’ and ‘best of both’.
When interviewed Young said she had made ‘several trips’ to Accrington from the Liverpool area and claimed they were ‘legitimate’.
She told officers that she was ‘doing a favour’ to the teenager and ‘believed he was visiting a relative in the area’.
The court heard police told Young that she was ‘working on behalf of a bigger organisation in Liverpool’ and had used a hire care because it was ‘easier to avoid detection’.
Young, 26, of Princes Avenue, Liverpool, and the teenager, also from Liverpool, both pleaded guilty to possessing crack cocaine and heroin with intent to supply and the teenager also admitted possessing cannabis and a knife.
He also pleaded guilty to separate offences of supplying class A drugs, possessing cannabis and possessing a knife relating to an incident in Hull while on bail in May 2017.
Young was given a 22-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, with 180 hours unpaid work and a six-month curfew.
The teenager, who had spent six months on remand in custody, was given a two-year youth rehabilitation requirement and a six-month curfew.
He was also given a three-month exclusion requirement not to enter Accrington.
Young and the teenager were both pressured and threatened to be ‘drug runners’ in a larger operation, their defence barristers said.
Peter Killen, defending Young, said she had been approached and ‘became involved unwittingly at first but then realised what was going on’.
He told the court that she was then pressured by a friend’s partner to carry on and ‘accepts that by failing to resist she made a very poor piece of judgement’.
Mr Killen said Young had no previous convictions and it ‘makes her involvement all the more mystifying’.
Desmond Lennon, defending the teenager, said he had been ‘criminally exploited’ after falling into debt.
He told the court that he had damaged a bike ‘belonging to a third-party’ and was ‘subjected to violence and threats of violence’.
Mr Lennon said: “He was taken advantage of by far more sophisticated criminals, the sort of characters who lurk in the background and use youngsters to do their dirty work.
“He was acting under direction of more sinister people. He has been criminally exploited in this case.”
