Friends locked up for heroin deal (From The Northern Echo)

Friends locked up for heroin deal

6:20pm Saturday 18th July 2009 in

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THREE friends who were caught during a police operation to tackle a drugs problem blighting a town were locked up yesterday.

Paul Wetherell, 20, Carl Jobson, 19, and 17-year-old Christopher Hope all supplied an undercover officer with wraps of heroin.

Wetherell also once sold crack cocaine to the detective during the sting in Stockton during January and February this year.

Jobson and Wetherell were sent to a young offenders institution for 18 months, and Hope was given a 12-month detention and training order.

Recorder Neil Davey, QC, told them: "You all know that the only sentence that can properly be passed for offending of this seriousness is custody.

"Heroin just ruins peoples lives, it is the cause of death and the cause of destruction and huge amounts of crime. That's why the courts take this offence so seriously."

Teesside Crown Court heard that all three worked on the streets for dealers, although Hope, of Dundas Road, Stockton, sold heroin on just one occasion.

His barrister Nigel Soppitt said: "He says that once he had done that, others in the organisation - not those in the dock - tried to recruit him to use him on a more regular basis.

"Thankfully, he resisted that and said he wanted nothing more to do with it. He did what many other young lads do in that area - he did the bidding for others."

Denis Chisman told the court that his client Jobson, of Northbourne Road, Stockton, was shunned by all of his friends, bar Wetherell, after finishing a sentence for sex offences.

He said the teenager became addicted to crack cocaine and his debt to his dealer increased when he crashed his motorbike, and was encouraged to sell on the streets.

Peter Wishlade, for Wetherell, said he earned £150 in either cash or drugs by working for the dealer, but added: "This involvement was for a relatively short period, on relatively few occasions."