Parents sold drugs from van as their child sat next to them

A HUSBAND and wife were "honest" enough to admit they turned to dealing Class A drugs when they ran into financial difficulties, a court has heard.

- JASON EVANS

James Hannify and Michelle Bradshaw were caught after police saw a suspected drug deal being conducted from their van.

Swansea Crown Court heard the couple had expressed concerns about the impact on their children if were they to be sent to prison, and a judge told the pair that they clearly had not been thinking about the impact on other families or the wider community when they started supplying drugs, nor about the violence and exploitation inherent in the drug supply chain.

Ieuan Rees, prosecuting, told the court that on July 3 last year police operating in the Hafod area of Swansea saw what they believed to be a drugs deal being carried out from a van parked on Odo Street.

Officers approached the vehicle and found Hannify at the wheel with his wife and a young child sat beside him.

The driver was found to be carrying £500 in cash while a search of the van turned up bags of a "white rock-like substance" near the handbrake.

A subsequent search of the couple's house uncovered further cocaine, £1,350 in cash, and a bag of "flowing cannabis" in a kitchen cabinet.

Mobile phones were seized and examined and messages relating to the supply of drugs were found as was a so-called dealer's tick-list of names and moneys owned. For all the latest court stories sign up to out crime newsletter