A teen drug runner was warned to having ‘nothing to do’ with the Rugby gangsters who sent him to hold drugs in Banbury.

Curtis Grant, 19, was caught with 1.42g of crack cocaine worth around £100 and £313 in cash when police went to conduct a welfare check at an addict’s flat in the Causeway on February 15.

Also found with the teenager was a number of phones, including one used to send mass marketing texts advertising drugs to addicts.

Mitigating, Peter du Feu told Oxford Crown Court that Grant found himself homeless when his dad was sent to prison last year.

“He became homeless overnight, either rough sleeping or sofa surfing.

"A cannabis problem that had been [acquired] along the way as it is for so many young people transferred to going to houses where crack cocaine was routinely smoked and he quite quickly became addicted,” the barrister said.

The Rugby gang that was supplying him crack parachuted him into the flat in Banbury.

Grant was ‘quite bewildered’ about how he got there and ‘fairly relieved it came to the early, abrupt halt it did’.

Judge Nigel Daly sentenced the teenager Picture: OM

Judge Nigel Daly, sentencing Grant on Thursday, was concerned about what would happen if the teenager returned to the West Midlands town from London, where he was currently living with a relative.

He told Grant: “Make sure when you go back to Rugby you avoid whoever it was you were involved with in the past.

“It would not go well if you start mixing with them again because they [will] exploit you. That’s what they do.

“You may think of them as friends but they are not. They just want to exploit you so they can make money – with you running the risk. Have nothing to do with them.”

Curtis Grant was found in a flat in The Causeway, Banbury Picture: GOOGLE

Grant, of Selhurst Road, London, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply class A drugs and simple possession of cannabis.

The court heard that Grant had no previous convictions.

Judge Daly agreed that the teenager had been playing a lesser role in the street supply of drugs, taking a starting point of two years’ imprisonment.

That came down to 16 months when Grant’s early guilty plea was taken into account.

And the sentence was suspended for 18 months, meaning he will have to serve the 16 months only if he commits another offence or breaches the terms of the order within the next year-and-a-half.

Grant must do 30 hours at a senior attendance centre and up to 20 rehabilitation activity requirement days.  

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