Gangster with heroin haul led police on high speed chase

● Drugs worth half a million pounds ● Seven years in jail after guilty plea

A gangster has been jailed for more than seven years after he was caught with heroin worth more than half a million pounds on the streets despite a dangerous, high speed bid to flee from police.

Paul Macaulay waited until an officer approached his vehicle at a filling station before he hit the accelerator and drove across a pavement and grass verge to join a busy road, almost colliding with traffic.

Macaulay, 30, took off at speed along Edinburgh’s Calder Road, driving around a roundabout the wrong way, forcing other motorists into emergency braking and narrowly avoiding multiple collisions. He then drove back along the other carriageway but was eventually forced to stop by a line of traffic and was hemmed in by police before detectives moved in to get him out of the vehicle.

Officers found almost 1.5 kilos of high purity heroin in his car along with £15,000 in cash in a black plastic bag.

A later search of his home found paperwork detailing more than £77,000 worth of deals and debts. A set of scales and high value watches were recovered from Macaulay’s girlfriend’s address.

A judge was shown footage of police tracking his white Vauxhall Insignia as it pulled in at a service station and then took off at speed in a desperate getaway bid after an officer approached the vehicle.

Lord Armstrong told Macaulay that his dangerous driving was committed “in your attempt to avoid being stopped by police”.

The judge said he had watched and noted the footage of the driving concerned which involved driving at excessive speed, driving on a pavement and a grass verge, forcing other drivers to take evasive action and driving at a roundabout in the face of oncoming traffic.

Lord Armstrong said he also took into account that the heroin recovered was 43 per cent pure and had the potential to producesome£520,000worth of the drug at street level.

The judge told Macaulay that he stood convicted of participating in the distribution of the “evil drug” which was a scourge on society, adding that if Macaulay had been found guilty after a trial he would have jailed him for 11 years, including a two-year maximum term for dangerous driving and a year for the aggravation that the drug trafficking was connected with serious organised crime.

The judge reduced his total sentence to seven years and four months imprisonment following his guilty pleas.

Macaulay, a prisoner in Edinburgh, has previously been jailed for drugs and has 19 previous convictions.