Jail for man caught with £92,000 of class A drugs
Supply of heroin and firearm offences
A repeat drug offender — caught with a handgun and a haul of heroin in a Stirling flat worth more than £90,000 — was this week jailed for eight years.
Police discovered the class-A drugs after a raid on the flat in William Booth Place and linked them to Thomas Orr.
A judge told Orr (30) at the High Court in Edinburgh on Monday that he had placed the drugs with someone else “clearly in an attempt to avoid detection”.
Orr, a prisoner at Low Moss jail, had admitted being concerned in the supply of heroin at the St Ninians flat in June last year.
He also pled guilty to possessing a prohibited weapon, a handgun, on June 12 last year.
Orr’s co-accused – grandmotherof-four Debbie Currie (48) and Rebekha Fallens (24) – were both spared jailed after earlier admitting a drugs offence and were ordered to carry out the maximum 300 hours’ unpaid work under a community payback order.
Fallens, of The Braes, Tullibody, and Currie, of William Booth Place, both admitted being concerned in the supply of the class-A drug. Defence counsel Sarah Livingstone, for Orr, said it was agreed that the maximum value of the drugs recovered was £92,700 and added that the gun that was found was not in working order.
She said Orr had no record for firearms but did have previous drug convictions, including being sentenced to detention as a 16-yearold over cannabis.
Ms Livingstone said that for five years up to 2016 there were no convictions for Orr and added: “That corresponds with a period of employment and putting behind him any use of drugs.”
But she said the death of his grandmother, with whom he was close, had severely affected him and he had turned to drink and drugs to cope and he lost his job.
She said he ran up a drugs debt and as a result of that was in possession of the heroin and gun. He was given a small quantity of drugs for his own use for storing the haul.
The defence counsel said: “He fully accepts he has embroiled both of his co-accused in this.”
William Lavelle, for Currie, said Orr and Fallens had lived upstairs from her and she was offered money to watch a suitcase.
He said: “She was under the impression or thought that this was some kind of street valium or valium of some kind. That’s what she thought was in there.”
But within a couple of days police acting on information turned up at her door armed with a drugs warrant and found the heroin.
Mr Lavelle said: “She is not, in my submission, a danger to the public in any way. She is someone who presents as a person who is unlikely to ever be before the courts again.”
He said the first offender was “a vulnerable person” who suffered from anxiety and depression.
George Pollock, for Fallens, said that at the time of the offence she was extremely vulnerable.
“She was failing to cope with family tragedy and had fallen foul of abusive relationships,” he said.
But he said she has taken steps to combat her addiction and made “a clear and genuine effort” at rehabilitation.
Mr Pollock said she was a low risk of re-offending and was a suitable candidate for a community-based disposal.
Judge Gordon Liddle told both women: “I have to tell you you require to consider yourselves extremely fortunate today.”
The judge said he took particular account of the fact that neither woman had a criminal record.
He fully accepts he embroiled both of his co-accused in this