A drug dealer exploited two highly vulnerable women, used violence on them and took over their homes to sell drugs or store weapons. Lucky Pemberton, a convicted thug and robber, was jailed for six years and five months for possessing drugs with intent to supply, which a judge described as "extensive dealing of Class A".
Concurrent sentences were handed down to Pemberton for two offences of assault, causing bodily harm, after he left one woman, whose first name is "Donna", with a graze to her head, and the second, "Helen", with swelling and bruising to her thigh after using a machete to injure her. What happened is more commonly known as "Cuckooing" - a form of crime, termed by the police, in which the home of a vulnerable person is taken over by a criminal in order to use it to deal, store or take drugs, facilitate sex work, as a place for them to live, or to financially abuse the tenant.
Nottingham Crown Court heard Donna, a former heroin and crack cocaine addict, had weaned herself off drugs but returned to using "bits and bobs" of Class A in the weeks before she met Pemberton. At first she had sympathy for him - he had nowhere to stay and he stayed at her Strelley home - and they became friends.
