Valentine’s Day turned into a living nightmare for a York couple as police raided their home and found a kilo of cocaine and cannabis, as well as illicit weight-loss jabs.
Kieran Barratt, 33, and Jade Elliker, 34, were roused from their bed and placed in handcuffs as Barratt told officers where they’d find the huge hidden drugs stash, York Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor Kelly Clarke said that Barratt directed officers to the kitchen and utility room where they found a large bag full of cannabis and a safe within a locker where they found a huge cocaine stash.
During a wider search of the house in Common Lane, Heslington, officers found several bags of cocaine and cannabis including marijuana “flowering tops”.
The combined weight of the cannabis was nearly four kilogrammes and there was “well over” half a kilo of cocaine inside the property.
Outside on the driveway, police searched a BMW and found a cache of cocaine in the central console.
They also seized £3,845 of cash, along with several mobile phones linked to the drug trade.
Ms Clarke said that messages on the phones were indicative of drug-dealing in cocaine, cannabis and “skinny-jabs injections”.
There has been a plethora of cases recently in which police and the NHS have warned the public about the sale of unprescribed and illicit weight-loss drugs.
It was Elliker who had been offering to supply the weight-loss jabs and she had also been cajoled into dealing cocaine and cannabis by her partner Barratt.
Admitted the offences
They were each charged with possessing cocaine and cannabis with intent to supply. Barratt was also charged with possessing criminal cash – proceeds from dealing illicit substances.
Elliker, who loved at the house in Heslington where the Valentine’s Day raid occurred, was also charged with offering to supply a medicinal product not subject to general sale, namely “skinny-jabs weight-loss injections”.
They both ultimately admitted the offences. Elliker pleaded guilty on the basis that she was “acting under the influence” of Barratt.
Ms Clarke said that Barratt, of Ashville Street, Heworth, had 26 previous offences on his record including dealing Class B drugs which resulted in a 12-month suspended prison sentence in 2016.
Elliker had four previous offences on her record including battery, but she had nothing on her record for drugs.
Defence barrister Khadim Al Hassan, for Barratt, said that his client, a former roofer, had dabbled in drugs from a young age.
Emily Hassall, for Elliker, said the mother-of-three had begun a relationship with Barratt during a “difficult period of her life” following the death of her former partner.
She said that Elliker and Barratt never lived together but he regularly stayed at her home in Heslington.
She said that the dealing enterprise was “in most part orchestrated by Barratt” and Elliker began dealing at his behest.
Ms Hassall claimed that Elliker, who was in full-time employment, “wasn’t aware” that selling weight-loss jabs was an offence and that her offences were “extremely out of character”.
Judge Simon Hickey told the couple they had been “making money from this miserable trade” which “ruins lives”.
He jailed Barratt for three years but said he was prepared to suspend the inevitable prison sentence in Elliker’s case because she had played a slighter lesser role and her “powerful mitigation” including her sole mothering duties and her employment status.
Elliker was given a two-year suspended jail sentence with 100 hours of unpaid work and 20 rehabilitation-activity days.
Mr Hickey set in train financial-confiscation proceedings for both defendants under the Proceeds of Crime Act which will determine how much they repay to the public purse for their ill-gotten gains.
