Drugs mule forced to smuggle heroin and crack cocaine from flat

A vulnerable Suffolk woman who was forced by a drug dealer to take a machete and drugs out of a block of flats in Colchester after armed police and a helicopter were sent to the area has been given a community order.

Catherine Green, who was a drug addict, was seen leaving the flats in Charles Pell Road with two men after a woman who lived in one of the flats called police to say she’d been threatened with a machete by a man, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

Green and the men had gone to a shop in Hawthorn Road, and while the men were in the shop, Green had walked away. 

When she was detained by police 10 minutes later, she was found in possession of 41 wraps of heroin and 31 wraps of cocaine worth £720.

A machete in a black sheath was found nearby, in a garden in Berberis Walk, where it had been discarded by Green, said Benedict Peers, prosecuting.

Green, 35, of Catherine’s Road, Sudbury, admitted possessing cocaine and heroin and being possession of an article with a blade, namely a machete, on Boxing Day 2019.

She was given an 18 month community order and a 35 day rehabilitation activity order.

Mr Peers said it was accepted that Green had been acting under duress until the point she had walked away from the shop.

Azza Brown, for Green, described her client as vulnerable and said she had been homeless at the time of the offences. 

She said Green had been staying at the flat of the woman who had contacted the police when the men went there with the machete and drugs.