A drug addict who moved two men into her home for protection was jailed for four years for supplying heroin.
Christina Jones was spending £600 a week on her own heroin habit when police raided the trio’s terraced house in Stockton on February 10.
The drugs den was littered with wraps of the Class A drug and a collection of mobile phones bearing text messages from customers asking “Chrissie” for deals.
Prosecutor David Brooke told Teesside Crown Court that Jones sold heroin in £20 and £10 wraps, going out onto the streets to hand them over.
When the police burst into her house in Camden Street, near to Yarm Road, Stockton, at 1.30pm with a search warrant they found Jones in the living room with her hands down the front of her trousers stuffing drugs inside.
There were eight foil wraps of heroin on the floor near the 34-year-old, more than £1,000 in cash, and also two Kinder eggs with wraps inside, a grinder, scales and a dealer’s debt list of names who owed hundreds of pounds.
The two men were arrested in the same raid, Ben Shepherd, 26, and Liam Bryan, 22. Shepherd was searched and found with quantities of cash, some of it hidden in his trainers.
Bryan was in an upstairs bedroom with a knife in the waistband of his trousers.
All three pleaded guilty to possession of heroin with intent to supply.
Mr Brooke said that Jones and Shepherd had previous convictions for drugs, and Jones had numerous convictions for shoplifting to feed her addiction, the latest was in January this year.
Zoe Passfield, defending, said that Jones asked the two men to move in with her for protection because she had been receiving threats from an ex-partner.
She said that Jones’s heroin addiction had been costing £80 a day, and the money she got from selling drugs went to feed her habit.
Her involvement was to go out to meet buyers, carry out the deal, and the money went on her own addiction.
While remanded to Low Newton Prison she had engaged with drug workers and she was determined to continue with treatment when she was released.
Miss Passfield, also defending Bryan, said that he was not a drug user and he became involved in dealing drugs to raise £1,000 he needed for a training course to win a job on the North Sea rigs.
Christopher Baker, defending Shepherd, said that he had also been dealing drugs to feed his own addiction.
But he had insight into the effects of drugs on the community, and he had shown remorse and determination to quit.
The judge told Jones and Shepherd that he hoped they would use their time in prison to free themselves of their drug habits.
Judge Peter Bowers said: “This raid produced quite clear evidence that what was being run here was a a drug-dealing enterprise that you Jones and Shepherd used to feed your own habits.
“For you Bryan it was a much more mercenary motive, you wanted to make money.”
Jones and Shepherd were both jailed for four years. Bryan was jailed for three years.
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