News / Two years behind bars for heroin supplier
A MAN who was concerned in the supply of heroin worth nearly £7,000 in Shetland has been sent to prison for two years.
Peter Henderson, of Grampian Prison, brought the class A drug into the islands by concealing packages in his body and travelling on the NorthLink ferry from Aberdeen, which arrived in Lerwick on 8 April.
Appearing from custody at Lerwick Sheriff Court on Wednesday, the 35 year old also admitted supplying heroin at Lerwick’s Ladies Drive and elsewhere on 13 May. Both offences were committed while he was on bail.
Procurator fiscal Duncan Mackenzie said that in the first instance police acted on intelligence and stopped him as he came off the ferry from Aberdeen.
He was taken to the Lerwick Police Station and strip searched, with it becoming “abundantly clear” that Henderson was internally concealing packages – something he initially denied.
Henderson was taken to hospital, where an examination confirmed he was concealing items. He admitted it and produced two packages.
More heroin was recovered two and a half hours later when he was back at the police station, with officers also witnessing Henderson successfully flushing some drugs down the toilet later that night.
The May offence saw police officers execute a search warrant before seeing Henderson again flushing heroin down the toilet.
The police managed to recover a “small quantity” of the drug at the Lerwick address.
Mackenzie said the maximum value of drugs recovered was £6,730, which amounted to a weight of 69.41g.
Defence agent Iain McGregor said his client, who had a history of using heroin, had “slipped back into old habits” after being made redundant.
He said that Henderson sourced drugs from the UK mainland because of “inflated prices in Shetland”, with heroin involved in the May offence sent via post.
The “bulk of it was for his own personal use and for his partner”, McGregor said, but Henderson accepts he would have supplied to a “limited” group of people.
“It was not a general commercial supply operation,” the defence agent said.
McGregor added that Henderson has been drug-free whilst in custody and had “resisted temptation” after being offered to supply heroin in prison.
Sheriff Philip Mann said there was “no realistic alternative” to a custodial sentence.
There was a “significant” amount of heroin recovered, he said, but there was also a “substantial” amount flushed away.
Sheriff Mann sent Henderson to jail for two years and backdated the sentence to when he first entered custody on 15 May.
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