A young cocaine dealer broke both his legs jumping from a roof as he tried to flee from a police raid, a court has heard. Ieuan Llewelyn was part of a gang of four young men who were supplying "significant quantities" of the Class A drug to users in and around Swansea.
As officers swooped on the flat which the group was using as a base for their dealing operation Llewelyn climbed out of a window onto a flat roof and then jumped to the ground - an attempt to escape which left him badly injured and unable to walk for seven months.
Llewelyn's fellow dealers were jailed last year but it was only this week that he came to be sentenced. Swansea Crown Court heard the 22-year-old has very limited previous convictions, and sending him down a judge said it was disturbing that the courts were seeing more and more young people with limited or no criminal histories appearing in the dock charged with trafficking Class A drugs.
Ian Wright, prosecuting, told the court that Llewelyn was injured in June last year at a flat in the Port Tennant area of Swansea. He said the flat was raided after undercover police had stopped a grey BMW car in Mount Pleasant a few weeks earlier and uncovered what appeared to be a large-scale drug supply operation. The driver of the Beamer, 21-year-old Leon Haines, was arrested and a search of his car uncovered dozens of wraps of cocaine in a "man bag" and two imitation handguns with cartridges. Photographs found on seized mobile phones led officers to take an interest in a property on Fabian Way in Port Tennant which they put under surveillance. While officers were monitoring the property they saw 22-year-old Connor Chapman and 19-year-old Tristan Beckett coming and going. The decision was taken to raid the flat, and in the property police found a BB gun, around 70g of cocaine, almost 4kg of benzocaine cutting agent, thousands of pounds in cash, and a number of unregistered so-called burner phones. Also in the flat was Llewelyn who, in an attempt to escape, climbed out of a window onto a flat roof and then jumped around 15ft to the ground - breaking both his legs in the process.
Mr Wright said it was clear from recovered text messages that Llewelyn had been trusted to operate the group's drugs line mobile phone. The court heard that in one exchange Chapman had asked Llewelyn if the drugs line was active, and Llewelyn replied he had turned it off because of police activity in the area - Chapman told him the phone was to be kept on at all times. Read here about teenage cocaine dealers "from good families" who were locked up after police swooped on their BMW as it was parked outside a corner shop.
Last year Leon Haines, Woodbine Terrace, Pembroke, was sentenced to 45 months in prison; Connor David Chapman, of Alderbrook Court, Blaenymaes, Swansea to four years in prison; and Tristan Jack Andrew Beckett, of Broughton Avenue, Blaenymaes, Swansea, to five years detention for their parts in the drugs operation. You can read the details of that court case here.
Llewelyn, of King's Road in Swansea's SA1 docklands, had previously pleaded guilty on a basis to being concerned in the supply of cocaine. The basis of the plea was that he was addicted to cocaine at the time and, though he had "some awareness" of the scale of the dealing operation, he had been acting under the direction of others. The court heard he has one previous conviction, namely for allowing himself to be carried in a vehicle which had been taken without the owner's consent.
Megan Jones, for Llewelyn, said the defendant had been unable to walk for seven months as a result of the injuries sustained while fleeing from the police, and his injuries had had a "profound effect" on him. She said the experience had made the dad-of-one reflect on what was important in life, and the defendant had no wish to return to his previous lifestyle.
Judge Geraint Walters said Llewelyn and his associates had been running an operation which was distributing "significant quantities" of cocaine in and around Swansea. Referencing the presence of weapons in Haines' car and in the Fabian Way flat, he said it was clear the group had not been involved in "boys' games" but in "serious crime".
He said he had noticed in recent times how many Class A drug dealers who were coming before the courts had no significant criminal records, a trend he called "very disturbing".
With a one-quarter discount for his guilty plea Llewelyn was sentenced to three years in prison. The defendant will serve up to half that period in custody before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community.
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