A mum addicted to drugs who was caught three times dealing to undercover cops has been sentenced to two years behind bars.
Kayliegh Medhurst, 31, was twice caught out acting as a drugs runner in December 2020 and sold Class A substances to undercover police officers.
While out on bail for those first offences, she was again caught attempting to sell Class A's in August 2021 by a police officer dressed in plain clothes, Hull Live reports.
Hull Crown Court heard how Medhurst had begun to turn her life around while in custody in the run up to her sentencing on February 3.
The judge was unmoved by her desire to be reunited with her daughter, six, and sentenced the Hull woman to a lengthy jail term.
Medhurst was first caught up in a sting on December 6, 2020, when she acted as a drug runner to supply an undercover officer with a £10 wrap of crack cocaine on Mitcham Street in the east of the city.
Just two weeks later she was also the supplier of a small amount of heroin which she sold to the same undercover officer on Durham Street.
Medhurst was brought in for questioning on June 15 after a search for her whereabouts, she answered 'no comment' to all police questions.
While on bail for the first two offences, Medhurst was witnessed by a plain clothes police officers attempting to make a deal with a known drug user.
When searched by the officer she was found to once again be in possession of crack cocaine and in her subsequent interview answered 'no comment' to police questioning.
Hull Crown Court was told that Medhurst came to trial with only a caution for possession in terms of drug offences but with a string of convictions for theft consistent with someone in the throes of drug addiction.
Defence barrister Mr Garth told the court that Medhurst had lived with her parents and had a loving home which was where her six-year-old daughter was currently being cared for.
Medhurst, in Mr Garth's description, had been attempting to put behind her some wild younger years with intentions to go to college and turn her life around.
That was until 2020, Mr Garth said: "She was, to use her own words, a mess and her life was a mess. She had fallen victim to Class A drugs."
Medhurst's home situation became increasingly transient, spending days away from her family home and disappearing, leaving the care of her daughter to her parents.
Mr Garth said: "Her life was driven by drugs and by where she could get her next fix. She fell in with people in the drugs underworld and her life was going nowhere.
"It was affecting her health, in the eight or nine months she was in this life she had dropped to six and a half stone which was dangerous.
"She was having fits on a daily basis, that was her life during that period."
Mr Garth told the court that Medhurst made no financial gain during her time as a drugs runner, coming under the malign influence of dealers who merely paid her in the form of her next fix of Class A drugs.
He also told the court that during her time in custody since her second arrest she had become clean of drugs after completing a methadone course and now intended to go back in to education and work to support her daughter.
Despite the defence's pleas to consider a suspended sentence to allow Medhurst to reunite with her daughter and move home, Her Honour Judge McKone deemed that only an immediate custodial sentence would be suitable.
She told Medhurst: "You know better than anyone the misery that Class A drugs cause and yet you were willing to peddle that misery to feed your own addiction."
There were audible cries from the dock and from the public gallery as Judge McKone confirmed a sentence of two years and nine months for Medhurst, half of which will be served in custody and the other half on license.
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