A 19-YEAR-OLD teenage drug dealer from Zimbabwe stunned Welsh police who arrested him after telling them: “This is the happiest day of my life.”
Marvin Mhlanga, 19, told detectives after being caught in a sting operation that he was under pressure from a drugs gang to sell their Class A drugs on the streets of Cardiff.
This week, Mhlanga was beginning a three-year jail sentence in a young offenders’ institution after admitting a charge of supplying heroin to undercover cops.
Judge David Wynn Morgan, sitting at the Cardiff Crown Court, told Mhlanga: “Fortunately, you yourself are not addicted – you were doing it because you got into trouble and you were being used by people who had some hold over you.
“But these are despicable crimes and there must be a lengthy sentence.”
The court heard Mhlanga sold heroin an undercover detective he only knew as ‘Dave’ on FOUR occasions. The officer’s cover was nearly blown on one occasion when Mhlanga’s friends became suspicious of him and conducted a full body search, but found nothing to confirm their doubts about his identity.
Defence barrister Andrew Jones said Mhlanga was sucked into the drug world after losing a “package” which he had been asked to hold on to.
“After that, he had to work off the debt. He is too frightened to name others involved,” Jones told the court.
After the four drug deals, the police drug squad moved to arrest Mhlanga at his home in Lady Margaret Terrace, Roath, and were shocked to discover he was HAPPY to be caught.
Barrister Jones said: “It’s right that he told them ‘I’ve never been happier’ – he was relieved when he was caught.
“He left school with nine GCSEs and had a life full of promise in front of him until he fell in with the wrong crowd.”
It was that bad company which was said to have led to Mhlanga being part of a street robbery in 2007.
On that occasion, he was part of a group that followed a youth into a lane in the Penarth area of Cardiff, took his belongings and left him with two black eyes and a fractured jaw.
Mhlanga was waiting to take up a business studies course at Coleg Glan Hafran, the court heard.