Two county lines drug dealers have received jail sentences for selling heroin and crack cocaine in Valley Gardens in Harrogate.

York Crown Court heard how Ethan Bodally and Ben Bland, from Leeds and both in their early twenties ,were caught by undercover police officers.

Sentenced at York Crown Court yesterday both men admitted two counts of possessing Class A drugs with intent to supply.

Prosecutor James Howard said two plain-clothed police officers spotted the dealers on January 7 last year.

Mr Howard said the area was a “well-known” drug-dealing spot and the officers were first alerted by the “disparity of age between the defendants and suspected drug users”

Police found £85 on Bland which he had hidden in his sock. He was taken into custody and questioned, during which a member of the public rang police and told them that he had seen a man matching his description hiding “a bag in a bush”.

Police retrieved the bag and found heroin and crack cocaine amounting to over £1,000.

Bodally, 22, of Stanks Drive, Seacroft, had eight previous convictions and was currently serving a four-and-half year prison sentence for a previous offence of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs in Scarborough in 2017.

He was on bail for those offences, before they reached court, when he started supplying in Harrogate.

James Littlehales, for Bodally, said his client had been put under “extreme pressure” by drug bosses to meet a £5,000 debt which included a brutal attack that left him with a broken thigh bone.

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Jailing Bodally for two years, Mr Hickey said it was the “least sentence” he could impose. The 24-month prison term would mean an extra year on top of his existing sentence.

Bland, 21, of Poole Crescent, Cross Gates, Leeds was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and was ordered to carry out 200 hours’ unpaid work and complete a 19-session thinking-skills programme.