A cocaine courier who initially told police a £50,000 criminal cargo he transported north on the M6 was for his own personal use has been locked up by a judge.
Police were alerted by a member of the public who saw a relatively new northbound Volkswagen Tiguan being driven erratically by 33-year-old Dean McLellan on July 3 last year. It almost collided with the central reservation and was then seen to pull into Tebay Services.
By the time officers got there, McLellan had already moved on. But he was pulled over on the outskirts of Carlisle, where he failed a drug test which showed the presence of cocaine, and was found to be six times the legal limit.
“When police stopped him he appeared to be very nervous,” prosecutor Claire Larton told Carlisle Crown Court today. “He was sweating and twitchy.”
Secreted in a drawer under the driver’s seat was a fraction under half a kilo of high purity cocaine which McLellan initially claimed was for his personal use. This had a potential upper sale value of £49,700 in the state it was found, although any adulteration or breaking down of the class A drug would have increased its value significantly.
A sat nav showed a Carlisle destination address and that he had travelled from the Salford area. McLellan’s fingerprints were found both external and internal packaging, with “500g” having even been written in the outside and the court heard he had been convicted several times for drug-driving in 2021 alone.
Brendan Burke, defending, said coercion lay behind cocaine addict and father-of-two McLellan’s involvement in the one-off trip as a courier.
“He had got himself into, frankly, a desperate situation in debt,” said Mr Burke. “The numbers are large. The people engaging in the process of selling drugs to people like Mr McLellan aren’t forgiving whether the sum is large or small.
“It is part of their business to make it clear that no one can default on any of that.”
Since confessing the “secret” drug addiction to his partner, McLellan, of Arbor Drive, Manchester, had managed to free himself of it without any outside intervention.
McLellan wept in court as he was jailed for 28 months by Recorder Julian Shaw, who took into account considerable personal mitigation and acknowledged the effect a prison sentence would have on loved ones.
“I have to impose upon you an immediate custodial sentence,” said the judge, “because class A drugs and involvement in class A drugs is a blight; it is a filthy trade causing untold misery, as you yourself have experienced.”
