Cocaine courier, aged 90, jailed on birthday

A 90-year-old Indiana man who admitted serving as a cocaine courier for a Mexican drug cartel was sentenced to three years in prison on what was his birthday.

Leo Sharp, a decorated World War Two combat veteran, was also sentenced to three years supervised release by Judge Nancy Edmunds in US District Court in Detroit.

Sharp had told Edmunds before she sentenced him, “All I can tell you your honour is that I’m really heartbroken that I did what I did. But it’s done.”

Afterward, Sharp turned to prosecutors and called the three-year prison term a “death sentence”.

Sharp was pulled over by police in October 2011 for erratic driving on an interstate highway in Michigan with what turned out to be 104 bricks of cocaine in his truck.

Prosecutors said Sharp hauled 1,250 kilograms of cocaine into Michigan from the south-west US on a half-dozen trips from February 2010 until his arrest, earning $1,000 per kilogram for drugs he transported.

He also hauled duffel bags stuffed with cash back to the south-west border of the US for the criminal organisation that was part of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, prosecutors said.

He pleaded guilty last October to one count of conspiring to distribute cocaine in an agreement with prosecutors that included a recommendation for a prison sentence of five years.