A repeat drug dealer caught with a pricey Rolex fell back on old ways after his former partner pestered him about not doing enough to financially support his four-year-old son, a court heard.
Oxford Crown Court heard that County Lines heroin and crack cocaine dealer Michael Adesanmi, 27, had been ‘in a protracted dispute’ with the mother of his child over the amount of support he was providing.
He had managed to get legitimate work on being released in June 2020 from his last prison sentence for supply hard drugs, his barrister Zara Brawley said.
But the rewards paled in comparison with the money he could make from selling drugs. When a former associate approached him for help, he went back to his old ways.
Prosecutor Mike Hollis told the court that Adesanmi had been involved in a London-based drugs line, called ‘Ace’, that had been operating in Oxford since around 2016.
Earlier this summer, officers raided Adesanmi’s shared house in Ilford. After experiencing ‘some resistance’ from the defendant, who was in the room at the time, they managed to get inside.
There were a ‘large number’ – 877 - of wraps of drugs on the floor. Inside a safe was £3,300 in cash. Also found in the room was a haul of designer clothing and a Rolex watch with an estimated value of £7,500-£9,500.
The drugs alone had an estimated value of £17,500, according to a police expert.
The officers found the ‘Ace’ drugs line phone, which analysis showed was typically seen in the same area as his personal phone.
Both phones were seized from Adesanmi’s property. Messages on his telephone led them to co-defendant Michelle Metherell, who lived some seven miles away in Hackney and to whom he had ‘outsourced’ the wrapping of his drugs.
Detectives raided Metherell’s home, seizing large amounts of substances typically used to dilute drugs like cocaine.
Adesanmi, of Woodberry Grove, London, pleaded guilty at the first opportunity to supplying class A drugs.
Sentencing him to six years and four months in prison, Recorder John Hardy KC said of the dealer’s role: “He may not be a general or field marshal but he’s certainly a colonel or a brigadier.”
He told the defendant: “You had the misfortune to lose both your parents when you were relatively young, fell into the wrong company and knew no other way of life than peddling class A drugs, which as everyone in this court knows wreak the most horrific damage on those who are addicted to them.”
Co-defendant Metherell, of Ickburgh Road, Hackney, had denied the offences but returned to the crown court on Friday to plead guilty on a basis to being concerned in supplying class A drugs.
Kellie Enever, mitigating, said her client had a 14-year-old daughter and was ‘extremely remorseful’ both for her offending and causing difficulties for her daughter and mother.
The judge gave the mum 18 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years.
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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.
To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk
Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward
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