GANGSTERS trafficked a young man to North Yorkshire to sell heroin and cocaine by a children’s playground, York Crown Court heard.

Jack William Ellis, 20, had nearly £3,000 of the hard drugs and more than £800 cash on him when he was arrested on August 22, said Michael Bosomworth, prosecuting.

The Nottinghamshire man refused to tell modern slavery investigators who had sent him to the playground next to a supermarket.

His barrister Eddison Flint said Ellis had to go where an “unsavoury set of people” told him to go as he owed them a £900 drug debt.

“It is due to drug dealers there are needles on the play ground where chalk marks used to be,” said the Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris. “It is a sad indictment on society.”

He told Ellis: “You were in effect being trafficked from the Midlands.”

The judge accepted the money would be handed on to others but added: “At the end of the day, you were peddling in misery.”

Ellis, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine and heroin with intent to supply and having criminal cash.

He was jailed for 21 months.

The £800 plus cash was confiscated.

Mr Bosomworth said a member of the public alerted police to the drug deals at the Scarborough playground.

Ellis abandoned a mountain bike when he saw officers and ran off, but was captured.

He had £1,200 of heroin in individual deals and £1,680 in cocaine deals on him.

Mr Flint said Ellis had suffered emotional and physical abuse in his childhood and gone into care when he was 15 or 16.

He had been unable to get work because he was homeless.

He had mental health problems, but had been prescribed anti-depressants which appeared to be working.

While on remand in prison, he had taken classes which he hoped would help him get a job on his release.