A county lines drug dealer who tried to throw away a bundle of wraps worth up to £3,000 after being confronted by police in a Bury St Edmunds alleyway has been jailed for 30 months.

Sentencing Clovis Cliford at Ipswich Crown Court on Monday (October 19), Judge Emma Peters said he’d been in possession of a “very significant” quantity of drugs which were ready to be dealt on the streets.

She said the matter was too serious to be dealt with by a suspended sentence.

Cliford, 24, of Oxlow Lane, Dagenham, pleaded guilty to two offences of possession with intent to supply class A drugs at an earlier hearing.

Andrew Thompson, prosecuting, said Cliford threw a package containing more than 200 wraps of heroin and cocaine into a tree when confronted by police in an alleyway off Euston Close in May last year.

Police officers had attended an address in Euston Close in response to concerns for the welfare of a female resident on May 16, 2019.

There was no answer and no sign of movement inside the property, until the door was finally answered by a woman.

As one officer was invited into the property another walked towards an alleyway at the rear of the building and Cliford was seen leaving the property through a back door.

He walked through the garden and up the steps to the alleyway and appeared to have items clenched in his fist, the court heard.

He was seen to throw away a handful of items which an officer saw shake the branches of a tree and fall towards the ground.

Upon closer inspection, the discarded package was found to contain 74 wraps of heroin and 131 wraps of cocaine with a value of between £2,060 and £3,000.

The court heard that Cliford, who had no previous convictions, had been sent from just outside London to Bury St Edmunds and had stayed in a “cuckooed” house - where a drug dealer takes over the home of a vulnerable person.

He had become involved in the offences after amassing a cannabis debt and being told he would have to repay it by handing drugs to a street dealer in Bury St Edmunds.