UPDATE: |Dad smashed up his phone after he stepped out the door and realised they were on to him News

Liam Coatsworth, 32, was spotted trying to destroy evidence after ‘he fell back into his old ways’

A father began to destroy his mobile phone as soon as he realised that the police were on to him. Liam Coatsworth, a former window cleaner, turned to dealing heroin and crack cocaine after “falling on hard times”.

Liverpool Crown Court heard yesterday (Wednesday 16) that undercover officers were patrolling the St Helens area “seeking to tackle county lines drug supply.”

Just after 11.30am on March 18 this year, they spotted the 32-year-old leaving an address on Norman Salisbury Court and quickly returning inside. He was then seen damaging a mobile phone before being arrested.

Prosecutor Christopher Taylor described how the officers managed to seize another device from him, which contained messages that were “consistent with the supply of heroin and crack cocaine”, along with a total of £45 in cash. He added: “This is clearly somebody else’s operation and he is working under the direction of others.”

Coatsworth, of no fixed address, has a “significant record” for violent offences, including receiving a three-year sentence for unlawful wounding in 2022.

He was also handed 40 months in a young offenders’ institute for possession of heroin and crack cocaine in 2011 and a subsequent 15-month sentence of detention for being concerned in the supply of heroin and cocaine.

Peter White, defending, told the court: “Quite simply, Mr Coatsworth would say that he fell on hard times in terms of employment. He began using drugs. He fell back into old ways.

“He describes a difficult background growing up in the care of the local authority. He tells me that his mother had significant drug issues. He was exposed to that from a young age, as well as violence.

“He does have a long term partner. He has two daughters, aged nine and 13.

“He has had various jobs in lift installation, warehousing, window cleaning and the like. He hopes to start up a business in some sort of travelling food van.”

Coatsworth admitted being concerned in the supply of heroin and crack cocaine. Appearing via video link to HMP Liverpool wearing a green North Face jumper, he was jailed for three years, the Liverpool Echo reports.

Sentencing, Judge Simon Medland KC said: “As I have sadly had to say so often before, drugs destroy people’s lives. They have resulted in you having served sentences in the past.

“Regrettably, although the last of these was many years ago, you got back into drugs and were inevitably dragged down into a cycle whereby you had to sell them in order to support your own habit.

“You were destroying your own life and assisting in destroying other people’s lives.

“That is the sad outcome of this dreadful trade. Therefore, when people are prosecuted and convicted of such offences, inevitably, the court must reach for a custodial sentences, and that I do.”

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