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Police find cannabis plants in Hook, Chessington, teen drug dealer's garden

Monday 9th August 2010

By David Lindsell



Police raided the home of a teenage drug dealer and found cannabis plants in his garden, just a few days before he was due to be sentenced for his crimes, a court has heard.

The 17-year-old from Hook, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told Kingston magistrates he thought taking and dealing drugs was “the right thing to do”.

Police raided his house on March 2 and found in his bedroom 29.3g of cannabis in differently sized wraps and
125 in notes in separate stashes.

At first he lied and said the drugs were for personal use but later admitted he had taken to dealing after losing his job two weeks before the raid.

Last weekend, ahead of his sentencing at Kingston Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, August 4, police raided his house again and found more cannabis plants.

Magistrate said: “We are concerned cannabis is being cultivated in the very home this weekend. It is not helping him in any shape or form, this temptation.”

His mother, who cried in court, blamed the planting of the cannabis seeds on a friend of her partner who is a gardener and had recently returned from a trip to Amsterdam, said: “I was completely unaware it was happening.

“To my and [my son’s] utter shock it wasn’t aware at all. I asked [my partner] to leave. We are in talks. It has caused a massive wedge. I don’t know if for definite he will be back.”

Magistrates turned down the prosecutor’s interpretation of the sentencing guidelines, which would send him to prison, after hearing he was starting a new college course, and gave him 100 hours of unpaid work. They also ordered the drugs to be destroyed and fined him
100.

Asked if he was going to stick to his new college course, he said: “I am going to follow it. Getting arrested and that. Obviously the police came back for that.

“At the time I thought it was the right thing to do but obviously not.”

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Bongme