Great-grandmother jailed for 'corner shop' heroin sales
A great-grandmother has been jailed for three years for supplying heroin and crack-cocaine from a specially designed corner shop at her home.
When police raided 63-year-old Rose Mann's house and arrested her, they found Class A drugs stuffed inside her bra.
Undercover officers had been carrying out surveillance on the pensioner's home in Withington, Manchester, for several weeks as part of the wider initiative, Operation Acapulco.
Manchester Crown Court was told Mann set up security cameras, had large dogs in the yard and a police scanner inside, as she sold drugs from a covered lean-to built on the back of her house. A DIY cannabis production factory had also been set up.
Last month, a jury found Mann guilty of nine charges of supplying and possessing drugs.
The jury had been told an undercover detective had visited the house on several occasions and was served with heroin and cocaine.
Passing sentence, Judge Anthony Hammond said: "This was drug peddling over a long period. The structure of the lean-to at the back was to have no other purpose than to conceal from prying eyes."
Judge Hammond said that if Mann had been younger he would have jailed her for six years.
He said he was also reducing the sentence to three years because of her ill-health.
Mann's 68-year-old husband Derek, who had pleaded guilty to permitting the house to be used for cultivating cannabis, was given a conditional discharge for two years.
