A CUMBRIAN drugs mule caught transporting cocaine and heroin potentially worth more than £30,000 has been jailed for more than two years.
Whitehaven man Kevin Shimmin – a former Army serviceman and father-of-four from Peter Street – was exposed as a criminal courier during a chance stoppage by police monitoring M6 traffic flow in South Cumbria just before noon on May 22. He was pulled over while travelling northbound just south of Burton services.
After 59-year-old Renault Megane driver Shimmin initially told officers “untruths”, they opted to search the car, at which point he directed them to a package underneath his seat. This contained both cocaine and almost a third of a kilo of heroin with a total potential street sale value of around than £30,150.
“He is a courier,” prosecutor Charles Brown told Carlisle Crown Court this morning (TUES), “transporting from Manchester, it would seem, up to Whitehaven where he lives.”
Shimmin had admitted possessing the illegal class A substances with intent to supply when he appeared before magistrates last month. They were told during that earlier hearing he made an “entirely foolish decision” to transport the package having accepted an offer from a friend he visited after the partial lifting of COVID-19 restrictions.
Jailing Shimmin for 28 months today, Judge Nicholas Barker said: “It is always sad for the court to see a former soldier, knocking on the door of 60 years of age as you are, before the court.
Noting Shimmin has been offered £600 to carry the illegal cargo, the judge told him: “That was a significant risk, you understand, and the risk you are now paying for. Those chickens, I am afraid, have come home to roost.”
