Chef caught with drugs in property

Chef caught with drugs in property

24 April 2019

A CHEF who alleged that he was “intimidated” into claiming ownership of quantities of cocaine and cannabis worth £350 has been convicted at Downpatrick Court on drugs possession charges.

Sentencing on Niall Molloy (22) has been adjourned until next month after a district judge told him that she did not believe his account of what happened on February 15 last year.

At last week’s hearing Molloy, of Ballyculter Road outside Downpatrick, who denied the charges, alleged that he had been “intimidated” into claiming responsibility for a quantity of cocaine and cannabis following a police raid at the Model Farm estate. 

Giving evidence, Molloy said he was working in Strangford when he took a call from a former friend telling him to “urgently come to Downpatrick” and that a taxi had been arranged to collect him.

The defendant said that he didn’t know what the issue was with his friend but when he arrived at the Model Farm estate, his friend told him a house was getting “raided”.

Molloy claimed that as he got into the front passenger seat in a car driven by another man, his friend told him “I’m not losing my kids under any circumstances.”

The defendant continued: “I felt threatened by him, by the way he was telling me and he told me to say that all the drugs were mine.”

Molloy said that as the other man drove him to Downpatrick police station several minutes away, his friend told him exactly where the drugs could be found in a coat and what drugs were in it, along with around £300 in cash. 

“He told me to say it was my coat but I had seen him wearing the coat before that,” Molloy told the court.

Molloy said that during police interview, he owned up to all the drugs found apart from some weighing scales and a list with telephone numbers on it.

He said: “I didn’t know about the list. It wasn’t my handwriting and I don’t have a mobile phone as I always keep losing it.”

Under cross-examination, Molloy admitted that his former friend had never physically threatened him or his family and agreed he had managed to gain “fairly intimate knowledge of the drugs and exact quantities” from his friend which he then passed on to police. 

The court heard that in addition to the cash, £150 worth of cocaine had been found along with £200 of cannabis.

District Judge, Amanda Brady, told Molloy that she rejected his evidence and said he had given police “a very coherent and detailed account and talked freely and openly to police about the copious drugs, telling them that you smoked a lot of grass”.

She added: “Ten months later, you gave a very different account. I just don’t accept that what was said today is the truth.”