Omagh men caught in Fintona cocaine factory jailed

TWO Omagh men who were caught ‘red handed’ at a house in Fintona with a huge haul of cocaine with a street value of £500,000, have been sentenced to four and a half years each.

Former British soldier and prison officer, Ashley Jonathon McClean (36) of Deverney Park and Corey Michael Leonard (26), a mechanic, of Arvalee Road will spend two years in custody and the remaining two and a half years on licence.

At Dungannon Crown Court they admitted charges of possession of the Class A drug cocaine with intent to supply.

On May 10 last year, police raided a house, they described as a ‘cocaine factory’ on the Rahony Road, Fintona. It was the home of McClean’s former partner.

Both men were in the garage of the property. All told police unearthed 2.5 kgs of Cocaine and approximately 9kgs of cutting agent. The officers also found 900 deal bags and other assorted drug related paraphernalia.

Judge Sherrard QC noted that the defendants, who were arrested at scene, did not “make any useful comment at interview”.

In the preparation of their pre-sentence reports both made the case that were in temporary possession of the drugs for another in exchange for financial reward, in Leonard’s case £2,000 and McClean for £1,000. The judge stated they had allowed premises to be used for transit of drugs.

Sentencing the men, he told them, “You must have had some awareness of the size and nature of this venture yet you chose to participate and continue to participate in it. There is no evidence you were front and centre of this venture.

“The drug trade depends on numerous links in the train and any link missing will break the train so any link missing is important even functionaries.

“Those who make their premises available and those who courier drugs all have an important role to play in this invidious trade”.

He also stated, “This is unusual volume of consignment for our jurisdiction would highly unlikely be entrusted to individuals who would pose a risk to it or were not trusted implicitly by those higher up the scale of command”.

Judge Sherrard noted both men had limited criminal records, had not been before the courts before for anything of this nature and had also expressed remorse. He suggested they would benefit from an ‘enhanced and lengthy’ period of rehabilitation and thereby broke the sentence down to include two and a half years on licence.

In conclusion Judge Sherrard warned McClean and Leonard, “If I can just remind you gentlemen, the court has to some extent mitigated your sentence today… I am mindful of giving you a really good opportunity to rehabilitate. But it should be absolutely clear, if you come before me again, the court will deal with you much less sympathetically than it has today”.