By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 11:42, Friday, 13 May 2011

A man caught with £90,000-worth of cocaine in his car in west Cumbria has been sent to prison for two years.

Paul Latham

Paul Latham, a 43-year-old father-of-three from Ennerdale Avenue, Workington, had agreed to act as a courier to pay off a debt he owed to his own drug supplier.

He was stopped by police as he drove on the A595 near Workington on March 11 with the class A drug hidden in his toolbox.

The court heard he had built up a debt of £2,500 after turning to drugs when his long-term partner unexpectedly left him in April last year. He managed to pay off all but £200 and agreed to do the drugs run to cover that final instalment.

“He expected to be getting just a few ounces, but when he picked it up he realised immediately it was substantially more,” prosecutor Alan Lovett told Carlisle Crown Court.

Latham pleaded guilty to possessing the cocaine with intent to supply it.

Passing sentence, Judge Paul Batty QC said there were unusual circumstances to the case which allowed him to impose a lighter sentence.

But he rejected defence counsel Elizabeth Muir’s plea that Latham need not be sent to prison.

Judge Batty said: “You are an intelligent man and you well understood what you were doing. The amount of drugs involved means it is quite inevitable that a custodial sentence must be imposed.”

First published at 11:25, Friday, 13 May 2011
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk