Scarborough cocaine dealer Kyle Blades-Wilkinson carried on 'filthy trade' after other gang members were jailed

Kyle Blades-Wilkinson, 21, was operating the ‘New Deal Line’ in Scarborough, a mobile phone which was sending out “broadcast” or bulk messages advertising cocaine for sale to drug users in the town.

Police were monitoring the dealer line and discovered that it was Blades-Wilkinson who was sending out the broadcasts.

It came just six months after he was handed a suspended prison sentence for peddling heroin and crack cocaine as part of the ‘P-Line’ – a drug network operated by a County Lines gang which flooded the Barrowcliff estate with potentially deadly narcotics, York Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Charlotte Noddings said that Blades-Wilkinson, who was handed the suspended sentence in May last year, began operating the ‘New Deal Line’ at the end of October.

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The line was detected by police in January this year after call data revealed that “broadcast messages were being sent on an almost daily basis”.

The “block” messages, which had been broadcast between October 31 and the end of January, informed users when drugs were available. In one of the messages, Blades-Wilkinson announced to his contacts that “power flake” was available and to “get at me while you can”.

He was arrested at his home on February 1 when police found two ‘zombie’ knives, three sets of digital scales, dealer bags and four car-registration plates inside his bedroom. He told police he had been dealing to pay off a £1,000 debt to another drug supplier after a car “went missing” in the summer of 2021.

Blades-Wilkinson, of Long Walk, Scarborough, admitted supplying a Class A drug and appeared for sentence via video link on Wednesday.

The court heard he had two previous convictions for drug offences including conspiring with others to supply cocaine and heroin as part of the ‘P-Line’.

He was given a 15-month suspended prison sentence for that offence in April 2021 and was still subject to the order when he operated the ‘New Dealer Line’.

The original ‘P-Line’, described as a “ring-and-bring system”, was a conspiracy involving Blades-Wilkinson and three other Scarborough men, Benjamin Freer, 25, Bradley Taylor, 21, and 20-year-old Alfie Bailey, who targeted vulnerable addicts in the town.

They had broadcast their “filthy” trade on the ‘P-Line’, sending out block text messages during the 12-month conspiracy between November 2019 and November 2020.

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The gang sent teenagers out to peddle drugs and get credit top-ups for their ‘P-Line’ phones on which they sent out more than 50 “broadcast” messages a day.

Taylor, Freer and Bailey were given combined jail sentences of about 11 years. Blades-Wilkinson was the only one to be spared jail on that occasion after the court heard that the others had exploited his vulnerability “like vultures”.

Nick Peacock, mitigating, said Blades-Wilkinson started dealing again because he was still in debt to one of the gang members.

Judge Sean Morris, who gave Blades-Wilkinson a chance to stay out of jail following his previous conviction, told the defendant: “I’m quite satisfied that you picked up where the others had left off and you carried on your filthy trade, deliberately peddling Class A drugs. You had a distribution network; you were sending out block messages.”

Mr Morris, the Recorder of York, said he was particularly troubled by the discovery of the serrated, machete-like ‘zombie’ knives, which were becoming increasingly common in the drug underworld.

Jailing Blades-Wilkinson for four years and two months, he told him: “You do have some problems (but) they don’t excuse your behaviour, nor explain it.”

Blades-Wilkinson will serve half of that sentence behind bars before his release on prison licence.