Black Country drug dealers given 13-year sentences

Jahral Jacobs, aged 35 – who fled before he could be sentenced – and 24-year-old Dadlin Sutton were seized by police after a major police probe linked to the arrest of a drug 'mule.'

West Bromwich woman Akeema Jones had more than £200,000 worth of cocaine hidden in her luggage when stopped in Canada on her way back to the UK from Jamaica in January 2012.

She had connections with a gang that continued to deal drugs in the West Midlands for 12 months after she had been arrested, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told.

Mobile phone records showed she had been in contact with members before flying out to Jamaica and Dadlin Sutton was at Heathrow Airport to meet the plane that should have brought her home, said Mr Benjamin Williams, prosecuting. Sutton was later arrested with £2,500 cash in Aberdeen where he had been in phone contact with a known drug dealer.

Officers kept him under surveillance after he was released without charge and he was detained again after being spotted with another suspect on January 30 last year, the court heard.

Jacobs was also detained and police raided the home of a woman linked to him in Cherry Road, Tipton. Her sister Ebony Burke, aged 23, ran from the property and threw away a bag containing £3,260 of cash from drug dealing before being caught, it was said.

Sutton, of Queen Street, Bilston, and Jacobs, of Hilton Street, West Bromwich, were both found guilty of conspiracy to import and supply cocaine after a trial in January this year, during which the latter absconded. Burke, also of Hilton Street, was found guilty concealing criminal property.

Judge Martin Walsh locked up Sutton, jailed Jacobs in his absence and gave Burke an 18 month jail sentence suspended for two years, with 200 hours of unpaid work.

He said: "Sutton and Jacobs were instrumental in the organising and making arrangements for Akeema Jones to travel to Jamaica. Each played a significant role for the arrangement and collection of drugs by Jones with the express intention of those drugs being brought back to the UK to be distributed for commercial gain," Judge Walsh said.

It was the result of a joint investigation by the force's Serious Organised Crimes Unit and the Gang Task Force. In May last year officers carried out a series of dawn raids at addresses across the Black Country and the three defendants were arrested along with others.

Akeema Jones, formerly of Thynne Street, West Bromwich, has since being released after a spell in custody in Canada.