Sprinter Leon Reid has opened up on how he came to be arrested as part of a police crackdown on the production of crack cocaine.
Reid was sentenced to 21 months, suspended for 18 months, and 220 hours unpaid work in February 2022 for allowing his flat to be used to produce crack cocaine. He was convicted for allowing his property in Bath to be used and for receiving payment of £500 per month.
The 28-year-old was found not guilty of concealing criminal property and of three firearms offences related to items seized from the flat.
Reid represented Ireland in the 200m at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and won a bronze medal for Northern Ireland at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
But his athletics career has been derailed by his conviction, which he says came about because he was betrayed by his friend, Romaine Hyman, who was sentenced to 26 years imprisonment for 18 offences.
"I put my trust in someone and an old training partner, an old friend," Reid told Sky News. "I feel like I've got really taken advantage of, especially when I was at the height of my career."
He added: "It's obviously really upsetting. It's been everything I've tried to get away from my whole life and getting put back into that sort of that circle, it was just nothing that I had ever dreamed that I'd ever be involved in, ever."
Reid was a promising sprinter, with his bronze medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games providing Northern Ireland with the country’s first athletics medal in 28 years. He was at the height of his career when his world came crashing down and needed an appeal against an Irish deselection decision to compete at the Tokyo Olympics while awaiting trial.
He said he was completely unaware that Hyman was using his flat for the supply of drugs. "I was there training for the Olympics. I was at the peak of my career," Reid said. "I wasn't really focused on my friend. He was doing his work-out in the apartment, which obviously he said it was forex trading and things like that, which I've got no interest in."
Explaining how he didn’t notice the cocaine production, he added: "He was making sure that I was out of the apartment. I was on a WADA drug list, so even if I touched a door handle that did have traces of drugs on, I would get a positive drug test and I would fail that, and I would lose my career. So I was in no position to risk that on any scale."
Having lost his athletics career, Reid is now working in telesales, although he hopes that a mentoring business can take off. Having grown up around drug-addicted parents and spent time in 14 different foster homes, he hopes to use his experience to stop others from making similar mistakes.
