TWO friends caught as they brought a kilo of heroin to York have both been jailed for five years and four months.

Simon Batiste, prosecuting, said police pulled over a Volkswagen Golf in Fulford Road because it had a crack in its windscreen and one of its brake lights was not working.

Inside were Zac Porter and Nathan Brummitt, four packets of heroin weighing a quarter of a kilo each and £230 in cash. Brummitt’s girlfriend was driving.

Police also found five mobile phones, and texts on Brummitt’s phone indicated he had been dealing in drugs for a “sustained period of time”.

Police found Porter’s fingerprints both inside and outside the bag containing the heroin.

A police expert later assessed the drug as worth £26,000 if sold in bulk deals and more if sold in street deals.

Judge Colin Burn told the two men: “This was a high risk enterprise you both got involved in” as he jailed both for five years and four months.

Porter, 24, of Hyde Park Walk, Sheffield, and Nathan Brummitt, 27, of Manor Oaks Court, Sheffield, both admitted possession of heroin with intent to supply it to others.

Brummitt had previously served a 32-month sentence for possession of a Class A drug with intent to supply, which York Crown Court heard was a form of Ecstasy or amphetamine.

Brummitt’s barrister, Stephen Grattage, said the text messages did not relate to heroin deals but were to do with cannabis.

This was disputed by Mr Batiste, who said some of the messages were about heroin.

He said though it was not clear which drugs other messages were about, the amounts and prices given “clearly didn’t relate to cannabis”.

Mr Grattage said Porter had asked Brummitt if he could provide a car for the journey, and because he “had a lot going on in his life” at the time, he recruited his girlfriend to drive the two men in her car. He was “deeply remorseful” for what he had done.

For Porter, Sean Sullivan said: “Porter must have been acting on orders from someone higher up the chain,” he said. “There was nothing on the phones to link Porter to drug dealing.”