Court told break-up behind drug use

A RELATIONSHIP breakdown had driven a young man into substance abuse to the point he ended up before the Toowoomba Supreme Court on drug supply charges.

Nathan Troy Sutton had no criminal history at all when at the age of 21 he engaged in drug use for the first time, the court was told.

On the night of September 19, 2021, CitySafe camera operators alerted police to the then 22-year-old who was seen to pass four MDMA (ecstasy) tablets to another man outside the Cube Hotel, Crown prosecutor Nicole Friedewald told the court.

Approached by police, Sutton told the officers he had a capsule in his pocket which was found to have just 0.095g of the drug, she said.

However, police seized Sutton’s mobile phone and when analysed it was found to contain an exchange of text messages that showed he had supplied 0.5g of cocaine to another man on September 26, 2020.

Sutton pleaded guilty to two counts of supplying a dangerous drug to another and to one count of possessing a dangerous drug.

Ms Friedewald said the Crown accepted his was an early plea of guilty and that Sutton was a youthful first offender, but he had twice supplied a Schedule 1 drug to another person, although the incidents were a year apart.

Sutton’s barrister David Jones, instructed by solicitor Brad Skuse of Skuse Graham Lawyers, said his client had “gone off track” after the woman he thought he would marry broke up with him, and he had gone from going to the pub two or three times a year to every weekend.

Justice Peter Applegarth ordered the convictions not be recorded and placed Sutton on 12 months probation and ordered he do 50 hours of community service.