A GANG which brought at least £400,000 (12kg) of cocaine to Worcester has been jailed for a combined total of 75 years.

Court one’s public gallery was full with the family and friends of the nine defendants during a tense sentencing hearing at Worcester Crown Court yesterday (Thursday).

Police and security guards stood in the packed gallery above the dock which erupted into angry shouts when judge Robert Juckes QC handed out long, ‘deterrent’ prison sentences to the main conspirators.

A jury of seven women and five men delivered unanimous guilty verdicts on Tuesday at the end of a trial which began in early October.

During various arrests and searches police seized more than £129,000 in cash and over two thirds of a kilo of cocaine worth between £24,000 and £35,000.

The bulk of the cocaine came from Liverpool but some of it had a more local source. The conspiracy lasted at least two years, beginning in 2013 and ending in October 2015 when arrests took place.

The sentences are as follows:

* Ashley James, aged 31, of Cherington Close, Worcester was jailed for 18 years for conspiracy to supply cocaine. Described as the leader of the conspiracy, he was also handed a five year prison sentence for concealing criminal property also known as ‘money laundering’, spending the proceeds of cocaine dealing on a car, holidays, dental work, luxury hotel stays and presents for his partner. The five year sentence will be served concurrently, making the total sentence 18 years.

* James Jones, aged 42, of Tolladine Road, Worcester was jailed for 15 years for conspiracy to supply cocaine. Described as an ‘altogether more shadowy figure’ than Ashley James, he had already served a seven year sentence for dealing cocaine.

* Todd Porter, aged 31, of Hollymount Road, Worcester, was jailed for 13 years for conspiracy to supply cocaine.

He was described as the ‘main runner’, ‘middle man’ and a ‘trusted lieutenant’ who brought his younger sister Tiffany Porter, mother Deborah Crowther and mother’s partner, Lee Bryant, into the conspiracy.

Judge Juckes said it was ‘astonishing’, given the evidence against him, that he ran his defence.

* David Warren, aged 41, of Grasmere Drive, Warndon, Worcester was jailed for nine years for conspiracy to supply cocaine.

* Liam Pearson, aged 51, of Aylton Road, Liverpool was jailed for 10 years for conspiracy to supply cocaine.

Pearson was ‘the courier’ who brought 1kg of cocaine to Selborne Road West in Worcester from Liverpool on June 23, 2015. He was arrested later that day on the M6 with just under £30,000 in cash and a dirty phone but had made previous journeys to the city.

Judge Juckes rejected the defence argument that Pearson was just the ‘postman’, saying that a postman would have no knowledge of what he was delivering and that Pearson ‘had to know’.

* Lee Bryant, aged 49, of Selborne Road West, Barbourne, Worcester was jailed for four years for conspiracy to supply cocaine.

The judge accepted he had a more limited role than the others, accepting a consignment of cocaine from Pearson.

* Deborah Crowther, aged 50, of Hollymount Road, Worcester was jailed for six years for conspiracy to supply cocaine. She allowed the garden of her home to be used by her son, Todd Porter, to store 1kg of cocaine.

* Tiffany Porter, aged 21, of Hollymount Road, Tolladine, Worcester received a two year prison sentence suspended for two years for conspiracy to supply cocaine. She must complete 250 hours of unpaid work within the next 12 months.

* Elizabeth Cottle, aged 25, of Cherington Close, Worcester, received a two year prison sentence suspended for two years for concealing criminal property, commonly known as ‘money laundering’.

She must complete 150 hours of unpaid work within the next 12 months.

Judge Robert Juckes QC described it as a ‘very significant conspiracy’ during which at least 12kg of cocaine, conservatively estimated to have a street value of £400,000, was brought into Worcester over two years, ending in October 2015.

The police investigation, described by the judge as ‘thorough’, involved bugging ringleader Ashley James’s Renault Kangoo van to record conversations, the seizure of drugs and analysis of so-called dirty phones, clandestine observations, a dramatic arrest of the drugs courier on the M6 and the arrest of street dealer associates of the main conspirators.

Throughout the trial James maintained he was dealing DMC, then a legal drug, not cocaine.

Judge Juckes said: “It was, perhaps, one of the more sickening aspects of the defence case that both you, Ashley James, and you James Jones pretended in evidence to be horrified by the thought of dealing cocaine, describing it as an altogether far more dangerous thing.”

Judge Juckes added: “Cocaine is considered to be one of the most dangerous and addictive drugs on the market which can have serious psychiatric consequences for those who use it, which often results in people resorting to crime to afford the drug which frequently their addiction has made them unable to afford.”

Ashley James and James Jones knew of the effects of cocaine said Judge Juckes, citing the evidence of conversations recorded by the bug placed in the van.