Drug dealer jailed after hiding crack for five days at police station

Junior Pennant, 21, was kept in police station cells after secreting a golf ball-sized package of crack cocaine and heroin in his bottom.

Portsmouth Crown Court heard despite Pennant clinging on for nearly a week, he passed the drugs.

Plainclothes police had spotted Pennant going into a block of flats in Bognor Regis with another man before they stopped him on June 16, 2017.

Prosecutor Gareth Burrows said Pennant was arrested and police noted he was ‘acting suspiciously with his hands around’ his bottom.

Pennant hid around three grams of heroin and crack cocaine for five days before going to the toilet on June 21, 2017 – exposing the drugs.

Mr Burrows said: ‘Plainclothes officers stopped both males, they failed to provide details, were arrested and taken to the police station and searched. This defendant was noted to be acting suspiciously with his hands around his (bottom) area so was kept in the custody centre.

‘Whilst under observation on June 21, some five days later, following a toilet request the defendant was observed to pull trousers down and found to be in possession of a golf ball-sized wrap containing those 20 packages.’

Pennant, of Abbots Park, Lambeth, had 17 wraps of crack worth £170 and three wraps of heroin worth £30.

Construction worker Pennant breached a suspended sentence for grievous bodily harm and assault when he attacked two jail staff with a metal broom handle. The July 2016 attack left one man with a fracture above his eye, the court heard.

Sentencing, judge Roger Hetherington said: ‘You chose to try in this case to try and evade justice, first of all by secreting those drugs in your (bottom), not revealing their presence until after several days when you excreted them naturally.’

Jailing him for four years and three months, the judge said: ‘You are one of those all too familiar defendants who comes down to the south coast from London with drugs and distribute those drugs to addresses that have been, no doubt, provided to you by someone else.’

Mitigating, Tarik Al-Mallar said Pennant was involved in drugs after being released from youth detention.

But he said his client had been complying with the suspended sentence for GBH.

Pennant was convicted at trial of two charges of having crack cocaine and heroin, class A drugs, with intent to supply.