A DRUG dealer has been remanded in custody after police conducting a raid found a gun and a dagger.
David Barrett, 47, of Pantile Avenue, Southend, has pleaded guilty after being caught with a revolver, a push dagger and a quantity of cocaine with intent to supply.
In a hearing on Friday to set his sentencing date, Judge Samantha Cohen remanded him immediately into custody.
“You have pleaded guilty to a very serious offence indeed,” she said.
The minimum term for possessing a firearm is five years in prison – but a defence barrister will argue “exceptional circumstances”, claiming Barrett thought it was a toy gun.
Asked at Southend Crown Court to enter a plea for possessing a .22 rim short fire calibre revolver, he replied: “Erm, guilty, I think.”
He had already admitted possessing cocaine with intent to supply and possessing a dagger at a previous hearing, but had been freed on bail.
It took until now for Barrett to enter a plea on the gun charge, said defence barrister Siobhan Cawkwell, because “it has taken the police some 10 months to confirm that the weapon is in fact legally a firearm”.
“There will be an application for exceptional circumstances… He bought it as a toy.”
She said the weapon had been among “a box of stuff that he paid £7 for”.
He “had no idea that it was a firearm,” she claimed. “It has been in a display cabinet this whole time.”
In addition, she said, he described the push dagger as “his grandfather’s letter opener”.
“I do think it’s going to be quite a complicated sentencing, I must admit,” the barrister said.
Judge Cohen replied: “It seems to me that even if you’re able to argue that the minimum sentence requirement doesn’t apply, it’s going to be a custodial sentence.”
She remanded Barrett to custody and set his sentencing hearing for October 23.
Wearing a black t-shirt with the words “Time to get paid” emblazoned across the chest, he muttered to himself as he was led to the cells.
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