Fisherman found asleep in car with cocaine stash 'couldn't recall driving'

A grandfather has been jailed for 28 months after police seized cocaine worth more than £7,000 on the streets and heroin potentially worth up to £660.

Fisherman Alastair Garden was detained by officers after they found him alone and asleep in the driver’s seat of a vehicle in Fraserburgh, in Aberdeenshire, which contained cocaine worth up to £400.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard that Garden could not remember driving the vehicle and was unaware he was in Fraserburgh.

During a police interview, he accepted that the bag containing the drugs was his and maintained that they were for personal use.

But a further search was carried out at his home address in the nearby village of Inverallochy and a larger quantity of cocaine was found along with heroin.

The court heard that the total amount of cocaine recovered had a potential street value of £7,100 and the heroin £660.

Garden, 51, told officers that the drugs found at the address were not his and he was not dealing drugs from his home.

Garden, who has four previous convictions on indictment for drug trafficking offences, admitted being concerned in the supply of the Class A drugs on April 30 this year.

Defence counsel Drew McKenzie said the drug offending occurred after Garden separated from his wife, and he was “not coping at all well with that separation”.

He told the court: “He tells me that since being on remand, he has remained drug free and is determined to remain drug free going forward.”

Mr McKenzie said that Garden had been threatened by others over lost drugs and agreed they could use his house for their activities.

Judge Alison Stirling told Garden, who followed proceedings via a TV link to Grampian prison, that he would have faced a three-and-a-half-year prison term but for his guilty pleas.