Trowbridge addict dealer handed four-year jail sentence

9:30am Friday 12th March 2010

By Wiltshire Times Reporter

A drug dealer from Trowbridge caught with thousands of pounds worth of heroin and crack cocaine has been jailed for four years.

Christopher Mounty, 27, formerly of Bramley Lane and Silverthorne Barton, was found in possession of lists of customers, as well as knuckle dusters and handcuffs, when police searched his home last summer.

Rachel Marshall, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court on Wednesday how officers stopped Mounty on June 22, because he was a known user.

He was searched and found to have bags containing white rocks and a brown powder, as well as a pipe used for smoking crack.

When the drugs were weighed, it amounted to 26.35 grams of crack cocaine which has a street value of £2,365 and 9.93 grams of heroin worth £800.

He initially denied the allegations, but changed his plea on the first morning of trial, before a jury could be sworn in.

Alex Daymond, defending, said his client realised he faced a lengthy jail term but said there was an element of coercion in him drug dealing.

He said his client had been an addict for a long time and had been put under pressure by other dealers to get involved in selling the drugs.

“He says he has expressed his desire to rid himself of this habit,” he said. “In Mr Mounty’s case it is not desire, he knows full well the damage it is doing to him, rather it is a lack of equipment and skills to distance himself from his lifestyle and associates. It is a fairly depressing picture all round.”

Judge David Ticehurst said: “What is clear is you are a young man with a considerable addiction to drugs.

“As has been said on your behalf if you carry on in this way you will spend longer and longer in custody.

“Whether or not you were dealing these drugs under pressure or not matters not a jot.

“If you chose to inhabit the world of drugs you are going to involve yourself with thoroughly unpleasant people.”

He also found he profited from his crime by £2,365 and ordered him to repay £460, all his available assets, within six months or face a further 14 days in prison.

Mounty was given his last chance by a judge in February last year when he was sentenced for his part in a staged newsagent robbery.

He and Debby Jones, 50, who worked behind the counter at Southwick News, cooked up a hoax raid, where he went into the shop with a knife and pretended to rob her of £500 from the till.

Judge Douglas Field imposed an 18-month community order with a drug rehabilitation requirement at the time.