Man who stored cocaine in secret floor compartment sentenced to six years

A young father who stored €97,000 of cocaine in a secret floor compartment in his bedroom has received a six-year sentence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

David Williams (aged 24) of Belclare Drive, Ballymun, "surrendered" himself to gardaí after they discovered the cache in a safe under the bedroom floorboards at his Marewood Crescent family home in Ballymun on September 19, 2007.

Williams wasn’t home when gardaí called but later presented himself at Santry Garda Station and pleaded guilty to possessing a total of 863.5g of cocaine, which he claimed he was holding for another person.

Garda Ciaran Murrihy told Mr Paul Green BL, prosecuting, that he found a plastic shopping bag of cocaine below a white safe containing another cocaine bag under loose floorboards in William’s bedroom.

He agreed with defence counsel, Mr Erwan Mill-Arden SC (with Mr Garth Fitzmaurice BL) that Williams was "very co-operative" during interview and "the only question he didn’t answer was who owned the drugs."

Gda Murrihy agreed that Williams "surrendered" himself to gardaí and accepted that the father-of-one had a €8,000 drugs debt around the time of the offence, which he accumulated through cocaine abuse after he broke his two feet jumping off a roof.

He accepted that Williams held the drugs to help pay off this debt.

Gda Murrihy said Williams, a former apprentice mechanic, has six previous convictions including false imprisonment, intimidation of a witness and possession of firearms on dates in 2007.

Mr Mill-Arden submitted that the false imprisonment charge arose when his client’s partner complained to gardaí after an incident in which he locked her in a bathroom for 20 minutes.

Gda Murrihy agreed with Mr Mill-Arden that his client was convicted on a possession of firearms charge after gardaí caught him with a Samurai sword following a Dublin house party on a date in 2007.

He accepted that the intimidation of a witness conviction arose from a simple dispute outside a pub where Williams agreed with a lady that she should be afraid of him.

Judge Tony Hunt said these previous convictions seemed "watered down" by Mr Mill-Arden’s cross-examination by the garda but added that he couldn’t avoid punishing Williams.

He described the case as "very sad" and suspended the final two years of the sentence, saying: "That’s the best I can do…anything less than that I think would lead to trouble elsewhere."