(Image: North Yorkshire Police)
A drug dealer continued peddling heroin and cocaine despite being chased and caught by police, York Crown Court heard.
Three days after officers found Paul Watson, 46, hiding with drugs in a garden close to York city centre, they caught him with twice as much heroin and cocaine in Chapelfields, said Jessica Heggie, prosecuting.
After the second arrest, police sent him to the courts in custody and he has been behind bars ever since.
A police drug expert estimated the drugs found on both occasions were worth in total more than £900.
Watson also had nearly £300 in cash.
He has 16 other drug convictions, mostly for possessing drugs and in 2016 was jailed for dealing in heroin.
His barrister Nicholas Hammond said: “It is clear that his life has been plagued by his addiction to Class A drugs.”
Judge Simon Hickey told Watson: “Class A drugs cause misery, degradation and death. You know that – you are on the front line dealing on the streets.”
Watson, of Barkstone Grove, Chapelfields, pleaded guilty to possessing crack cocaine and heroin with intent to supply them on March 3 this year and possessing heroin and crack cocaine with intent to supply them on March 6.
He was jailed for seven years.
Ms Heggie said when police tried to stop Watson on March 3 because they suspected him of committing unrelated offences, he made off and hid in a garden in Mill Street.
They found him and when they searched him, they found two bags of crack cocaine and nine wraps of heroin and £90 in cash.
He claimed the drugs were for his own use only.
The same day police found three more wraps and £90 in his coat pocket and a container of bicarbonate of soda and a small amount of crack cocaine in his home.
Together the drugs were worth £280 on the streets, said the police expert.
Watson was released on bail, but three days later, police stopped him on Ridgeway in Acomb, carrying 32 drug wraps – 16 each of crack cocaine and heroin.
At his home they found more bicarbonate of soda, some white powder, a grinder and electronic scales.
This time the drugs were worth £640 on the streets and he told police: "I'm not a grass, I cannot afford to pay them."
Mr Hammond said in the past Watson had been on medication but that wasn’t the case when he was selling drugs to other users in March, in part to fund his own habit.
“People who are on the street holding the drugs, selling to other users are people at the bottom of the chain,” he said.
Mr Hammond said there was another side to Watson and handed in a reference from a community worker.
- Cocaine and heroin are often sold mixed with “cutting agents” - white powders, such as bicarbonate of soda.