A JUNIOR manager has been jailed for four years after police found drugs worth more than £50,000 at his home and the factory in Malton where he worked.

Nick Adlington, prosecuting, said police investigated Darren Gell’s activities when they spotted him snorting a line of cocaine off a window pane in York city centre at 1.30am.

They found cannabis with a street value of £28,890 in his loft, m-Cat with a resale value of £17,700 and evidence that he had supplied cocaine to another person. Released on bail, he hid 51.3g of cocaine worth £3,840 in his locker at Malton Bacon Factory, but police got a tip-off and found it.

Recorder James Baird said at York Crown Court that the fact that Gell had hidden the cocaine in a place where he had a position of trust as supervisor was an aggravating feature. “The only sentence is an immediate term of imprisonment,” he said at York Crown Court. Gell, 33, who lived with his girlfriend, Alana Michelle Roberts, 29, in Foss Court, Huntington Road, York, pleaded guilty to supplying cocaine, and possession with intent to supply of cannabis, m-Cat and cocaine. In each case, the prosecution accepted his claim that he was storing the drugs for someone else.

His barrister, Glenn Parsons, said he had been mixing in the drugs world and saw getting paid for storing the drugs as a “short cut to an honest lifestyle”. Since his arrest, he had learnt his lesson, he said He was a hard worker who had heart and breathing difficulties.

David James Flintham, 32, of Cambridge House, Bootham Terrace, York, who had previous drug convictions and whose fingerprints were on the cannabis packaging, pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis with intent and was jailed for 18 months. His girlfriend, Michelle Elizabeth Evans, 31, also of Cambridge House, was fined £100 after admitting two charges of possession. Roberts was fined £250 for trying to get drugs for a party that never took place.