Spon End drug dealer jailed for more than seven years...

[dutchman]

When the police searched a drug dealer’s Coventry flat for the second time in a day, they found a sawn-off shotgun hidden behind a panel in the bathroom.



At first Sunveer Hayer claimed it must have been left there by a previous tenant, and then that other people had stored it without telling him what it was or where they had put it.

But his stories were rejected by a judge at Warwick Crown Court who jailed Hayer, aged 32, of Meadow House, Spon Street, Spon End, for a total of seven-and-a-half years.

He had pleaded guilty to possessing the illegal firearm, for which there is a statutory minimum sentence of five years, and possessing cocaine and cannabis with intent to supply them.

Judge Sylvia de Bertodano said: “The defendant knew perfectly well where the gun was.

“I cannot say whether he personally placed it there, but I am sure it was there with his consent and knowledge.

“He had by his own admission been dealing class A drugs from the flat for about a month. I find the gun was connected to the drug dealing business: that is why he had it.”

And passing sentence, she said: “Class A drugs ruin people’s lives. They are at the heart of much other crime, and those who supply them must go to prison.

“The possession of a firearm, particularly a firearm of this sort, can only have been for one purpose and puts you into a category of people who are supplying drugs at the dangerous end of that sort of supply.”