Leeds dealer caught with £2,000 of drugs at bail house two weeks after prison release
A convicted dealer who was released from prison was then caught with more than £2,000 worth of drugs just two weeks later.
Alec Mubaiwa was given a lenient 28-month sentence in 2023 after he admitted dealing in crack cocaine.
But having been freed on licence on November 5 this year, he was ordered to live at a property in Goole in East Yorkshire.
Leeds Crown Court heard that on November 19 officers went to the address and searched it, finding 59 wraps of heroin worth £590, cocaine worth £120 and ketamine worth £1,600.
Having been recalled, he appeared in court this week over a video link from HMP Leeds. The 21-year-old admitted two counts of dealing in Class A drugs, and one of dealing in Class B.
Mubaiwa, now of Rossefield Approach, Bramley, has six previous convictions for seven offences.
Mitigating, Charles Blatchford said Mubaiwa had initially been a “habitual cannabis user” who ran up a debt with his dealer, so was put to work.
He said: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch, or in this case a free joint. To pay off his debt he had to start dealing.
“On his release [from prison] he was approached by those to whom he owed the debt. Just because he had been in prison it did not mean the debt had disappeared.
“He was told if he did not back to dealing something bad would happen to him or his family.”
But Judge Richard Mansell KC remained sceptical and told him: “I’m not a fool. you are not being trafficked or exploited. You have been immersed in the drug-dealing trade.
“You need to get out of this culture very quickly or you will receive longer and longer sentences. Worse still you will find yourself seriously injured or even killed.
“You leave me no alternative to impose a significant sentence.”
He jailed Mubaiwa for three years.