County Lines drug dealer jailed – Richmond

A 27-year-old man has been jailed for more than three years after he pleaded guilty to running a County Lines drug enterprise.

Elijah Henry-Gooding, of Tavistock Avenue, Ealing, pleaded guilty to two counts of possession with intent to supply class A drugs and possession of a bladed article as well as three separate counts of being concerned in the supply of class A drugs.

He was jailed for 38 months at Kingston upon Thames Crown Court on Thursday, 10 April.

The court heard how on Tuesday, 30 July last year, Henry-Gooding was stopped by BTP plain clothes officers in Richmond following intelligence which suggested he was in possession of a potential County Lines phone and was regularly travelling to Richmond, to sell drugs at the station and surrounding areas.

During the search, Henry-Gooding was found to be in possession of £760 in cash and two mobile phones. One of these was a Nokia burner phone confirmed as the drugs line phone. He was subsequently arrested for being concerned in the supply of class A drugs.

Once in custody, a strip search revealed a large clingfilmed package concealed in Henry-Gooding’s underwear. It contained 64 individual wraps of crack cocaine and 37 individual wraps of heroin.

A folding lock knife was also found to have been concealed internally.

Supervising officer Sgt Julian Mason said: “Now that Henry-Gooding is behind bars Richmond and its surrounding communities can breathe a sigh of relief that a prolific drug dealer is off the streets along with the illegal substances he was peddling.

“Henry-Gooding believed he was a criminal mastermind and above the law but once again the work of our County Lines Taskforce proves that we will stop at nothing in dismantling and disrupting the menace of drug and knife crime on the railway.”