TWO teenagers who sold heroin worth thousands of pounds in a North Yorkshire town have been jailed for three years.

Daniel Ryan, 19, and Free Jenkins, 18, appeared before York Crown Court, and both admitted supplying Class A drugs over a period between April 2012 and September 2013, in Scarborough.

The pair told police they had been forced to move to Scarborough and deal heroin to pay off a debt to a drug dealer in their home city of Liverpool.

Jessica Strange, prosecuting, told the court the dealer had traced them to the seaside town, and Ryan and Jenkins had returned the profits to the dealer, but had recently had an amount of heroin and about £3,000 stolen at knifepoint.

They were “fearful for their safety”, so handed themselves in to police and asked to be held in custody.

Keith Allen, representing both, said Ryan and Jenkins were “effectively working as unpaid minions of persons with far greater criminal responsibility” and “walked into the police station desperate to bring an end to a cycle of offending that they found themselves effectively forced into”.

The court heard the pair were selling about £3,000 worth of heroin each week, which Recorder of York Stephen Ashurst called “an incredibly large amount” when considered on an annual basis.

Mr Ashurst said Ryan and Jenkins were “two young men who have played a significant part in the distribution of Class A drugs in a town which has been beset by problems, particularly by offending at the hands of heroin users”.

He said: “You were not orchestrating this dealing, you were fulfilling your part of the bargain in order to be relieved of the ever-increasing debt.

“You asked to be held in custody for your own protection, and could not see a way out of the situation you found yourself in.”

Sentencing the pair to three years each in a Young Offenders’ Institute, Mr Ashurst praised them for handing themselves in to police and pleading guilty, and said if they had gone to trial they would likely have been jailed for five years.

The pair also faced possession charges for cannabis and heroin, but no separate sentences were given for them.