Lancaster dad who turned to dealing cocaine when he lost his job in lockdown is jailed

Alejandro Jeffery Requena, 33, of Bolton Avenue, Lancaster, Lancashire, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply a Class A drug.

Sessions House Court was told on the morning of May 4 last year, officers attended his home and on their arrival he was arrested and the property searched.

Prosecutors said a phone was recovered from the living room and another from his trouser pocket, and a tub of oppressed white powder was found in the kitchen, along with a set of scales containing a white residue.

When he was taken to Blackpool Police Station, officers seized £290 cash from his wallet.

The power was later analysed and shown to be23.4g of cocaine, and messages indicative of street dealing were found on one of the phones.

Requena has 16 convictions for 18 offences but has never served a jail term, and had no history of using or selling illegal drugs, the court heard.

Jailing him for two years, Judge Graham Knowles QC said: "You've got a complicated life history and before you committed this offence you were in a relationship with a very young child, married and a second child was imminent, and you lost your work because lockdown started.

"Up to that point you have a great deal in common with a lot of people your age and older.

"But you set yourself apart from them when you decided that rather than living on what was available to you you would sell class A drugs to make money.

"It looks as though you were aiming to make up about what you'd been earning legitimately, or slightly more, not aiming for a large income from it, but it was a quite deliberate decision to sell these appalling drug that cause misery to those who take them, and the same to those who are burgled and robbed so that people can pay for their drugs."

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