Mum was running drugs for Hollywood line in Oxford

When Fiona Akello-Joseph, 27, was arrested on July 29, 2018, she told police officers that her two children - then aged two and five - were with adults and did not need to be looked after by the officers.

Having been arrested at 2.30am and taken to Abingdon police station, she did not come clean about leaving her children alone in her Greater Leys terraced home until around 6am when she pressed the intercom buzzer and asked to speak to an officer.

Police officers were, in fact, already at the property in Emperor Gardens - having arrived at around 5.50am. Inside, the younger child was in her cot with a full nappy and sick down her front.

Ants were crawling over the bed where the older child, a boy, was sleeping. There was no child gate on the stairs and a bottle of ant killer was left open and within reach.

When police officers tried to gather the children’s things, they could find no socks for the boy. Children’s clothes were eventually found bundled together in a wardrobe and were ‘not easily accessible’.

A package of class A drugs worth up to £5,900 was found in the house where the children were left alone.

Less than a month later, on August 17, she was caught in a car with two men – including Hollywood line leader Akil Finlayson, a rapper called Big Keyz – and later found to have a package of heroin worth up to £900 on the street.

Akello-Joseph, of Emperor Gardens, Oxford, pleaded guilty on the first day of her trial last year to being concerned in the supply of class A drugs, possession with intent to supply class A drugs and child neglect. She had no previous convictions, but was cautioned in 2014 for leaving her child alone while she went out for the night.

A co-defendant, Tamika Phills, 30, of Beckett Close, London, admitted being concerned in the supply of heroin and crack cocaine. She was the driver of the car stopped by police in Oxford in the early hours of July 29.

Inside the Emperor Gardens property Picture: CPS (Image: CPS)

Both entered a basis of plea. Akello-Joseph said she had fallen into addiction and others were using her home to warehouse the drugs. Phills accepted driving her car to supply drugs in order to help her boyfriend Akil Finlayson – a member of north London grime collective Ice City Boyz - ‘out of a sense of obligation’.

In mitigation, Phills was said to work with young people to turn them away from crime. She received 22 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years with 150 hours of unpaid work and up to 25 rehabilitation activity requirement days.

Akello-Joseph, who is expecting another baby, was jailed for 32 months. Judge Ian Pringle KC told her: “Your case is significantly different in the sense that within a month of being released under investigation you again were out drug dealing and you must have been aware of the consequences for you of doing that.”

Finlayson was jailed for eight years in 2021.

Tamika Phills outside Oxford Crown Court (Image: Oxford Mail)