Woman threw thousands of pounds worth of drugs out of car window as she fled from police

An Axminster drug courier who threw £46,000 worth of drugs out of a car window as she fled the police has been jailed after it was recovered from the roadside.

Bethany Morris hired a car which was being used by a London dealer to transport supplies to East Devon when it was intercepted by the police on the A30 at Honiton.

She was the passenger and threw the stash out of the window during the chase, which ended when police penned in the Nissan Qashqai at Fairmile.

Mother-of-two Morris, 29, has been a heroin addict since she was 14 and was offered the chance to avoid an immediate jail sentence if she joined a rehabilitation scheme and moved to a project in North Devon.

She was jailed for 16 months by Judge David Evans. Her co-accused, Bayram Erdogan, 20, of Downs Park Road, Hackney, was jailed for three years and four months at an earlier hearing.

Morris, of Bonners Glen, admitted being concerned in the supply of heroin and cocaine and permitting Erdogan to drive without insurance.

The judge told her: ”You played a deliberate and instrumental role in the bringing to this part of the world a very significant amount of class A drugs with a street value of more than £46,000, doubtless to be sold on the streets. You clearly knew what you were doing and played a part in assisting the operation. You were motivated to some extent by financial advantage or the prospect of drugs and you had an understanding of the scale of the operation.

“You were operating under the influence under the influence of another and your role can properly said to be lesser.”

An earlier hearing was told Erdogan tried to outrun police after being tracked down the A303 and intercepted on the A30 near Honiton. He dodged police attempts to stop him and Morris threw two packages of drugs out of the window of the hire car. He had no licence or insurance and the packages were recovered by the chasing police officers. He dodged two police cars which tried to box him in on the Honiton exit and returned to the A30 where he sped off at more than 100mph.

He was eventually pulled over in a layby at the Fairmile exit. The drugs were found near the Honiton sliproad.

The police were looking for the car in the early hours of August 23 last year, three days after Morris had taken out a seven day hire for £350 at Exeter Airport.

They recovered 248 grams of cocaine with a purity of 74 per cent, and 185 grams of heroin.

Simon Burns, for Morris, said she had been exploited because of her long-term addiction and that it was a tragedy that all attempts to help her had failed. He said her addiction has affected her physical and mental health and rendered her vulnerable to being used.