Baby-buggy drug dealer jailed

Published on Monday 11 February 2008 13:10

A DRUG courier who left his DNA on a £98,600 package of heroin hidden in a child's push chair was jailed today.

A court heard how detectives – waiting at Haymarket rail station in April 2005 after a tip-off – saw a local man they recognised as a drug dealer.

Paul Thomson, 30, got off a train from Liverpool and went into a bar nearby. When the other man followed, Thomson pulled a package from his companion's baby buggy and handed it over.

Police followed the other man, who escaped after a struggle, but the detectives seized the kilo of heroin.

The packaging revealed traces of Thomson's DNA but the unemployed father-of-two from Liverpool wasn't caught until February last year, when he was arrested on a separate matter.

At an earlier hearing at the High Court in Edinburgh, Thomson pleaded guilty to being concerned in the supply of heroin and today he was jailed for three years and nine months.

Judge Lord Mackay of Drumadoon was told that Thomson's contact had also been caught and jailed for six years in October 2005 after a trial.