Club brawl drug dealer back in jail
ADRUG dealer has been jailed along with his partner in crime for offering cut price deals to addicts – soon after he was released from prison for his part in a mass brawl outside a Bristol nightclub.
Ibraheem Giwa and accomplice Stephen Balogun were caught with crack cocaine and ‘graft’ phones they used to send group texts to customers.
Exeter crown Court heard they were intercepted as they came off the M5 after an undercover police officer posed as an addict. At the time Giwa had only just come out of prison after serving an eight-month sentence for an affray outside a Grime music event at the Analog Club in Clifton.
Both Giwa and Balogun were members of a County Lines gang but were operating out of a house in Mantle Close, Clevedon , and making regular trips to Exeter with supplies of heroin and crack cocaine.
The two phones were used to send texts to customers offering ‘rocket fuel’ and ‘size bigger than your eyes’.
Giwa had 39 wraps of crack hidden on him while each man had their own graft phone under the seat when they were stopped by police.
Balogun, 23, of High Wycombe, and Giwa, aged 22, of Bexhill, both denied but were convicted of two counts of offering to supply class A drugs.
Giwa admitted possession of crack with intent to supply and Balogun admitted driving while disqualified.
Jailing Balogun for five and a half years and Giwa for three years, nine months, Judge David Evans told them: “Class A drug supply, particularly by gangs from big cities moving into smaller towns where the market has yet to be saturated, is engaged in to make profit on the back of the mental, emotional and financial suffering of users. You were not mere minions, you were clearly performing an important operational role.”
During a week-long trial, the jury heard an undercover officer contacted the men in January and ordered drugs which were delivered by a runner in the centre of Exeter.
The two were stopped on the M5 as they arrived in Exeter from Clevedon.
They had been kept under observation and made at least three similar trips over ten days, including one in which they were filmed covertly at a McDonalds at Sedgemoor Services.
Samantha Giffin, for Giwa, said he had got involved with gangs after dropping out of a business studies degree at Greenwich University.
Paul Grumbar, for Balogun, said neither men were anywhere near the top of the organisation and had been exploited by others because of their own debts or drug habits.