Father had son in car when caught with drug stash
A "hardworking family man" and cocaine addict who had his three-year-old son in the car with him when caught with a cache of the drug valued over €564,000 has been jailed for ten years by Judge Patricia Ryan.
Judge Ryan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court refused an application by defence counsel, Ms Isobel Kennedy SC, to postpone activation of the sentence to allow Nelson spend a "final Christmas with his children while they were still young".
Brian Nelson (aged 32), a plumber and father of two of Cooley Road, Drimnagh had such a severe cocaine addiction that his nose caved in and he needed surgery earlier this year to reconstruct it.
He ran up a €30,000 "drug debt" to a vicious criminal had him taken up the Dublin Mountains where he was tied to a tree and threatened with being shot if he didn’t pay €20,000. His mother sold the family home to raise this sum.
Detective Garda Brendan O’Grady accepted that a bank statement handed into court showed €20,000 had been withdrawn from her account around that time and that further documentation showed that the money related to the sale of her home.
He agreed with Ms Kennedy that the person Nelson owed money to was capable of inflicting harm on others and that the "drug debt" he had run up was considerable
Ms Kennedy (with Ms Caroline Biggs BL), told Judge Ryan that Nelson was a hardworking family man who was now drug free. She said his behaviour on the day represented "a slip but a significant slip" from his previous good record.
Judge Ryan said she accepted that Nelson was "effectively a courier" who had made efforts to rehabilitate and had got involved in the offence because of a drug debt.
He pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of the drugs, worth an estimated €564,473 at South Circular Road on March 6, 2006.
Nelson told gardaí he had collected the cocaine at Dublin Port from "a culchie truckie" from Cork after receiving a phone call directing him to do so.
He said "another fella on the phone" then ordered him to hold the cocaine until the following day and he agreed because he was promised that €2,000 would be knocked off his "drug debt" for holding it.
Det. Garda O’Grady told prosecuting counsel, Ms Caroline Cummings BL, that Nelson’s car was under surveillance before gardaí stopped and searched it on South Circular Road. His son was with him.
A number of packages of cocaine were found in the boot, along with a diary carrying a list of name and figures and two mobile phones.
