Prosecutor alleges drug dealers set up 'shop counter' through ground-floor flat window in Northampton

Chanze Nolan, 21, Joab Mugugu, 32, and Connor Letts, 18, are on trial at Northampton Crown Court after pleading not guilty to possession with intent to cannabis and heroin.

Yesterday (May 22), the court heard how the three men were arrested after plains clothes police officers spotted what is alleged to have been a deal in progress through a ground-floor flat window in Nethermead Court, off Lings Way, in September 2016.

Prosecutor Andrew Howarth QC told the court: "[Plainsclothes officers] saw a man standing outside the window looking in and engaging with the occupants.

"When they approached the window, the man made off... [through the window] was a table with a significant quantity of cannabis, bank notes and a set of scales.

"Effectively, a shop had been set up and that window was the counter."

The three defendants were arrested from inside the flat shortly after. Police also found 15 wraps of heroin in the flat, a machete and several mobile phones.

Just under 78 grams of cannabis were seized in the flat. The total street value of all drugs in the house came to £930.

In the following days, one of the seized phones received several text messages, including: "You still making me that bad boy brew tomorrow?"

The three defendants made no comment in police interviews. Nolan and Mugugu entered written statements denying they dealt drugs of any kind and said the phones seized were not theirs.

The trial, which is expected to last four days, continues tomorrow.