Footballer admits working for dealer

9:15pm Thursday 13th September 2007

Former Bradford Park Avenue footballer Daniel Sheriffe has told a court how he had worked for a drug dealer.

Sheriffe, 26, told Leeds Crown Court he was paid £60 by the dealer, known as Trigger, to hold on to drugs for him for several hours.

He also went on errands for the supplier to meet a man on the street to give him money in exchange for drugs.

Sheriffe is facing a jail sentence after pleading guilty to supplying class A drugs in August last year when he was on day leave from prison while serving three-and-a-half years for manslaughter. He supplied heroin to an undercover officer.

Giving evidence at a trial of issue hearing, Sheriffe admitted he had been convicted in 2000 of two offences involving crack cocaine and heroin for which he received a three-year custodial sentence. A large stash of the drugs had been found at his house, which he said he had been holding for Trigger.

In 2005 he was jailed for the manslaughter of a 17-year-old student who suffered fatal head injuries when Sheriffe punched him outside a Leeds night club.

He told the court that when he was on day release, he met Trigger, who demanded £2,000 from him. He claimed the dealer had threatened to harm his family while he was in prison.

Sheriffe, of Hamilton Avenue, Chapeltown, Leeds, agreed to work for him, advertising his window cleaning business and helping in his drug trade. In February he suffered four stab wounds to his leg and one to his back on the eve of a court appearance. The prosecution claim he inflicted the injuries on himself and made up a story about being attacked by Trigger.

But Sheriffe gave a dramatic demonstration to the court of how his attacker had bent down and hacked at his legs with a knife.

Prosecutor Richard Mansell said: "You took the dramatic step of injuring yourself and concocted this story of being attacked to get a lesser sentence for dealing drugs."

Sheriffe said: "I am a footballer. There's no way I'd inflict pain on my body."

Sheriffe is due to be sentenced tomorrow after Judge Jackie Davies rules on the trial of issue.