Two Wirral men caught with a bag of cannabis worth about £26,000 after a police chase through Wallasey and Birkenhead have both been locked up.
Former promising football player Jack Beach and Kieran Salkeld were caught after police officers following their Ford Fiesta in Wallasey signalled them to stop on September 5 last year.
However the car sped off along Gorsey Lane to Dock Road and through red traffic lights onto Duke Street at twice the speed limit.
Chris Taylor, prosecuting said the mile long chase ended in Birkenhead when the car slowed down and Beach got out and ran off with a large bag.
He was detained after a chase by Birkenhead Park and as the officer approached he could smell cannabis and could see some through a tear in the bag. The driver, Salkeld drove off but was identiifed from CCTV footage and arrested on February 2 this year.
The bag had been found to contain 1.3 kilos of flowering female heads of cannabis and on Beach’s mobile phone a drug dealers tick list was discovered.
Beach, 24, of Roughly Place, Hamilton Square, Birkenhead, pleaded guilty to possessing the cannabis with intent to supply and Salkeld, 21, of St Oswald’s Avenue, Prenton, admitted being concerned in supplying drugs and dangerous driving.
Beach, who has no previous convictions, was jailed for 16 months and Salkeld, who has 15 previous convictions including drug offences, was sentenced to 14 months and banned from driving for 22 months.
Salkeld pleaded guilty on the basis that Beach had asked him to drive him to an address in Liverpool to pick up some “weed” which he presumed was for his own use.
When Beach collected the bag he realised that the situation had changed but reluctantly agreed to drive Beach home.
The court heard he would have received some of the cannabis as payment.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that Beach had been with football academies but nothing had come of that and he lost an apprenticeship after the business he was was taken on by folded and he “drifted into drugs.”
Jeremy Hawthorne, defending, said that his arrest had been “a gigantic wake up call and he has altered his lifestyle and priorities. He has done his own rehabilitation mentally.”
Charles Lander, defending Salkeld, said that he was “courteous and polite” and has changed for the better since the birth of his two-year-old daughter.
Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/