Aberdeen drug dealer died weeks after customer attack

By JOHN ROBERTSON
Published on 06/02/2013 14:37

A DRUG dealer died weeks after he was attacked by a customer and drove away from police with a broken ankle and fractured jaw, a court heard.

Joseph Merrick, 47, of Birmingham, had moved from the West Midlands to Aberdeen in May last year and set up his operation from a rented room in the Bridge of Don area of the city.

He arranged to meet James McAllister, 30, and would normally have handed over crack cocaine through the window of his car, but decided on this occasion to leave the vehicle.

As the two men approached one another, they both bent down to pick up “an item” which had fallen to the ground, the High Court in Edinburgh heard.

“They began struggling...(McAllister) punched Merrick twice to the head, causing his jaw to break...Merrick was pushed and went over on his ankle which fractured,” said the advocate-depute, Andrew Brown, QC.

A witness called the police and officers found Merrick in his car. He told them all was in order and he drove off, but the officers were suspicious and followed and stopped him. He was taken to a police station, and then to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary where he underwent surgery to have metal plates inserted in his jaw and ankle. However, he died some ten weeks later.

McAllister, of Sumburgh Crescent, Aberdeen, was charged with the culpable homicide of Merrick but after “lengthy consultations with a pathologist” about “particular complexities of the medical evidence” the Crown accepted a guilty plea to the lesser offence of assault to severe injury. He will be sentenced next month.