A forklift truck driver’s drugs stash was discovered after police visited his home following an unrelated domestic call-out.
Owen Rexter, 26, was originally charged with dealing the ecstasy pills and cannabis that police discovered at his home in Abingdon on May 8, 2020.
But on Friday (September 29), prosecutor Matthew Knight told Oxford Crown Court that the Crown now accepted the man’s account that the drugs were for his own personal use.
Police found cannabis in a tub beneath the duvet in his bedroom. Further searches uncovered more cannabis and 29 ecstasy pills. In total, he had 100g of class B drug cannabis.
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Mitigating, Lyall Thompson asked the judge to bear in mind that his client’s drugs were found during lockdown, when users were buying higher quantities ‘in order to have to buy less often’.
He was earning £1,600 a month as a fork lift truck driver for a publishing house, but had prospects of going into business with his carpet fitter father.
Rexter, of Cotman Close, Abingdon, pleaded not guilty at an earlier hearing to possession with intent to supply class A and B drugs, but admitted simple possession.
On Friday, the judge Recorder John Bate-Williams fined him £450 and ordered he pay £85 towards the prosecution’s costs.
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