Kettering drug dealer's old debt came back to haunt him as he's jailed again
A Kettering drug dealer has been jailed again after selling class A substances to pay off an old debt.
Luke Cole was locked up for five years in 2016 and still owed money to those involved in his criminal activity when he was released.
A court heard he faced ‘intimidation and coercion’ to return to his old life to repay the drug debt – but in 2021 he was caught with 23g of crack cocaine and about 34g of heroin.
On Tuesday (June 4) he was jailed for 27 months after admitting two charges of possessing class A drugs with intent to supply.
Northampton Crown Court heard that the 33-year-old was caught out on May 18, 2021, when police raided an address in Naseby Road at about 9am.
They recovered a ‘relatively large’ amount of heroin and crack cocaine which were valued at about £5,000 and Cole was arrested.
Cole, who took a holdall into the dock anticipating a spell behind bars, was previously jailed in 2016 for possessing class A drugs with intent to supply.
The court heard he was dealing drugs in 2021 to repay a debt from that previous crime.
Mitigating, Rich Hodges said he faced pressure to deal again and that he had no influence over anyone above him in the chain.
He said: “He was not in this to get rich.”
Mr Hodges said Cole wanted to set up his own business, is desperate to leave his old life behind and that his biggest regret was that prison would mean he couldn’t care for his mum.
Urging the case for a suspended prison sentence, Mr Hodges added: “He accepts that he made the wrong decision but he felt that he had no choice at the time.”
His Honour Judge David Herbert KC told Cole that he clearly had an understanding of the scale of the operation he was involved in.
He said that, taking sentencing guidelines and aggravating and mitigating factors into account, the shortest sentence he could impose was 27 months which couldn’t be suspended.
Cole will serve up to half of his sentence in prison before being eligible for release.
Judge Herbert KC told him: “You say that you want to turn things around and not reoffended and you will have that opportunity when you are released.”