A DRUG dealer caught with more than £5,000 of heroin and crack cocaine split into 553 street deals was shaking with fear when the police apprehended him, Bradford Crown Court heard today.

Daniel Coyle was peddling the drugs after borrowing money and being put under pressure to pay it back, his barrister said.

Coyle, 22, of Moorhouse Avenue, Swain House, Bradford, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply heroin and crack cocaine on April 12 and was jailed for two years and eight months.

Prosecutor Fiona Clancy said that two police officers on patrol in a marked van saw his red BMW pulling up on Wrose Road in Shipley.

They suspected that Coyle was involved in street drug dealing and saw a large quantity of loose change in his vehicle. He had wraps of drugs in his coat and volunteered that there were more in his other pocket.

Miss Clancy said Coyle had 9.6 grams of heroin on him at 49% purity and worth £480.

He also had 34.4 grams of crack cocaine of 59% purity, split into 274 wraps and valued at £2,655.

More heroin was found in the car, giving a total of 279 deals.

In all, there were 553 street deals of Class A drugs worth £5,173.

Coyle also had about £90 in cash with him and two phones that he did not give the policer the pass codes for so they could not be interrogated.

He tested negative for heroin and cocaine at the police station.

Miss Clancy said he had four previous convictions for six offences of dishonesty but nothing for drugs matters.

His barrister, Shufqat Khan, said in mitigation that Coyle was pressured to deal to pay off a debt.

One of the arresting police officers said he was quiet, withdrawn and “shaking with fear” when he was caught.

“He had a defeated look on his face,” she recalled.

Mr Khan said Coyle was born and raised in Bradford and had worked hard in a number of jobs since leaving school at 16, including as a landscape gardener. He was unemployed at the time.

He was a young man who had learned his lesson after being remanded in Leeds Prison during the Covid-19 lockdown, the court was told.

Recorder Andrew Haslam QC said: “The dealing of drugs is a wicked trade. People prey on addicts for financial gain.”

He reduced the four-year starting point for Coyle’s sentence to make allowance for the pandemic and to give him credit for his prompt guilty pleas.