Gun-toting drug dealer Adam Ashton gets 9 years

Jun 23 2010 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Gun-toting drug dealer gets 9 years

A MIRFIELD joiner with a cocaine habit is today starting a nine-year jail sentence after being caught acting as a willing lieutenant for a dangerous West Yorkshire drug dealer.

Adam Ashton, 28, helped convicted dealer John Waters supply cocaine to undercover police officers during a covert operation aimed at flushing out Waters. The pair were both arrested in February after a £3,500 drugs deal.

Prosecutor Nikki Peers told Bradford Crown Court how 40-year-old Waters, of Far Highfield Close, Idle, Bradford, was arrested from the driver’s seat of his Range Rover Sport vehicle while Ashton made a run for it, but was tackled to the ground by an off-duty police officer.

Armed response officers who had stopped Waters’ Range Rover as it drove along Huddersfield Road towards Mirfield then searched Ashton and found him in possession of a loaded 9mm semi-automatic handgun.

Although Ashton refused to say who the gun belonged to and did not produce it during his arrest, Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC described it as a lethal weapon which was the favoured handgun of drug dealers because it was small, light and easily concealed.

The court heard that Waters and Ashton, of The Maltings, Mirfield, had been ripping off their intended customers by substituting cutting agents for the real cocaine.

Judge Durham Hall said: “It is, of course, the fact that these undercover officers, who I have commended, were putting their lives at risk.

“They must have known the possibility and they did their duty.’’

Judge Durham Hall said yesterday that Waters, who was jailed earlier this month for 14 years for drug dealing and firearms offences, was in charge from start to finish, but Ashton – himself a heavy drug user – had associated with him either for money or possibly for excitement or status.