Corby man swung his coat in police station and cocaine fell out

Stephen Donnelly, 49, who has racked up 35 previous convictions, was arrested by police on separate matters in a house in Stephenson Way, Corby in early July.

Officers took Donnelly, of Waterside Lane, to the Weekley Wood Justice Centre in Kettering.

After being transported to custody he began to swing his coat around and a wrap of cocaine fell out of it. He was charged with possession of cocaine and was before Northampton Crown Court last week for sentence.

Donnelly turned up to court late, carrying a Tesco bag.

He had previously admitted the charge of cocaine at magistrates’ court but his case was sent to the crown court for sentence as he was on a suspended prison term at the time.

Last year, Donnelly was one of a group convicted of peddling hard drugs in Corby. Police raided his home and found it was being used as a trap house by the gang run by Tyrone James and Alexi Da’costa. In his living room were several men involved in the gang, with phones ‘ringing off the hook’, surrounded by class-A drugs worth £8,700, including 144 wraps and two separate pots of heroin, 33 wraps of crack and 11g of cocaine, cutting boards and cling film.

Donnelly racked up 31 previous convictions between 1994 and 2001 but then detoxed from drugs and didn’t reoffend for more than a decade. He became addicted once more after his partner died in 2017 and his son was removed from his care.

At his hearing last year, Donnelly turned up drunk, carrying his trusty Tesco bag, and was given 22 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, after admitting allowing his home to be used for drug dealing.

At the latest hearing at Northampton Crown Court last Thursday (September 18) the judge heard how only one wrap of cocaine was found and so fined him £30 after he made full admissions about what he had done, and told the court that he was in pain from a trapped nerve in his back.