A drug dealer was so popular that he had people queuing in an alley by his Orford home to buy cocaine from him.
Earlier that day, May 9 this year, police had seen Paul Henry leave his home on his bicycle on three occasions and while keeping watch saw him involved in a transaction with a known drug user.
“Drug users were standing in a queue in the alley and then all leaving in different directions,” said Carmel Wilde, prosecuting.
She told Liverpool Crown Court that a search warrant was executed at his home in Hunter Avenue, Orford as part of the Operation Apollo county lines drug dealing investigations.
They were delayed getting in as he would not grant them access to his flat and they saw him looking out of his bathroom window and they suspected he was trying to flush drugs down the toilet.
Once inside they found a £10 wrap of crack cocaine, £160 cash, drug dealing paraphernalia used to package crack.
When interviewed, 36-year-old Hunter said that he was a mechanic and the cash was from that work.
He pleaded guilty to being concerned in supplying cocaine on the basis that he did not know all the people he supplied but they would have been associates of people he knew.
He said, “I was selling drugs on my own account to fund my own addiction.”
The court heard that he has 21 previous convictions for 54 offences including producing cannabis.
David Farley, defending, said Henry, a dad-of-one, would use bicarbonate of soda to make crack cocaine which he had started using when he was 28. He had been addicted to cocaine for the previous eight years.
He is a trained mechanic but his wages did not provide enough money to fund his drug habit. He suffers traits of ADHD and while on remand in custody has been abstinent from drugs.
Jailing him for 27 months Recorder Michael Duck, KC, said, ”You were supplying people you knew or their associates. This is an extremely serious offence.”
