JAILED: Dealer bid to pay off £1,000-debt lands him behind bars
A teenager's desperate bid to pay off his near-£1,000 debt to a drug gang has seen him locked up for four years.
The trouble started for Zimbabwe-born Hardlife Gomo when police detained him and seized cocaine and heroin he had been given to sell by the criminals.
The 19-year-old received a sentence of two years’ detention suspended for 18 months after being caught by police with 97 wraps of drugs, worth a total of at least £960, and a machete, near Wolverhampton’s Science Park on June 17, 2016, the city’s Crown Court heard.
Almost exactly a year later – on June 16 – he had 48 wraps of heroin and a combat knife in his possession when picked up by officers in a similar swoop amid fears of drug dealing and knife crime on the Farndale Estate in Whitmore Reans, explained Mr Philip Brunt, prosecuting.
Gomo made a run for it but gave himself up when cornered after a short chase. The drugs were discovered in a package he was holding while the knife was hanging on a string around his neck, it was said.
Mr Brunt continued: “He said he had been given drugs and was waiting to be told where to hand them over to a third party.”
Mr Rashad Mohammed, defending, said: “Realising he was not going to get away, he put up his hands and voluntarily handed over the drugs and knife.
“He was under pressure to repay those who had lost out when almost £1,000 worth of drugs was seized from him by police on an earlier occasion.”
There was no evidence of any message relating to drug dealing being found on the three mobile phones the defendant had when arrested for the second time, the court was told.
Gomo, from Glentworth Gardens, Whitmore Reans, who left school with five GCSEs and now hopes to complete an Open University course in finance, pleaded guilty to possession of heroin with intent to supply, possession of the combat knife and breaking the terms of a suspended sentence.
He was ordered to be detained in a Young Offenders Institution for four years by Judge Nicholas Cartwright, who told him: “You were given a chance but have now brought about your own downfall.
“Dealing to pay off a pre-existing debt is only modest mitigation.
“You could have repaid the money by going out to work.”
