Drug-dealer’s deadly arsenal found in raid

A DRUG-DEALER was found with three shotguns as well as a stash of money and more than £29,000 worth of crack cocaine and heroin, a court has heard.

The guns and drugs were recovered when armed officers swooped on a house following a tip-off and were part of a major “county lines” drug-trafficking operation peddling Class A drugs from Liverpool to Wales.

Swansea Crown Court heard firearms officers were deployed to a house in Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen on January 4 this year after a drug charity received a panicky call from a client saying a “friend” in her property had discharged a weapon.

Ieuan Rees, prosecuting, said officers entered the house in Derwydd Avenue and found Liverpudlian Jonathan James Blair along with three guns, almost £12,000 in cash, and £29,000 worth of crack and heroin.

The court heard two of the weapons were 12-bore guns stolen during a burglary in Ystalyfera in December. The third was a shotgun that had had both its barrel and stock shortened.

All three weapons were capable of being fired and there was evidence the sawn-off shotgun had been discharged in the house.

Mr Rees said Blair was “very cooperative and candid” with the officers throughout the search.

Blair, 25, of Oakdene Road, Liverpool, pleaded guilty to possession of a prohibited weapon – the sawn-off shotgun – as well as possession of two shotguns without a licence, two counts of possession of crack with intent to supply and one count of possession of heroin with intent to supply.

Blair was jailed for a total of eight years and four months.