Taxi Driver Online

Cabbie jailed over drugs death

A TAXI driver who sold pure heroin as cocaine and caused a barman's death in a real-life copy of a scene from the film Pulp Fiction, has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Mohammed Ibrar, 36, was convicted at Reading Crown Court in May, of supplying the drug to Luke Anderson at a late-night party at the George and Dragon pub in Wargrave in October 2004.

Mr Anderson, a 22-year-old Australian who lived and worked at the pub, snorted two lines of the heroin believing it was cocaine.

But unlike the Uma Thurman character in the 1994 Quentin Tarantino blockbuster, noone was on hand to administer emergency treatment, and he fell into a drug-induced sleep and was found dead on the floor the following lunchtime.

Canadian tourist Lesley Potts, 22, told the jury she witnessed Ibrar - who befriended Mr Anderson hours before after being picked up in his taxi - hand him the drug.

Ms Potts said friends watched Luke snort the white powder through a rolled-up £10 note, and she added: "It wasn't until afterwards we found out what it was. We thought it was cocaine."

When pub manager Kim Cottingham found him she tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. Miss Cottingham said Mr Anderson was an "intelligent young man" who dabbled in recreational drugs.

Ibrar, who had no criminal record, was then living in Auckland Road, east Reading, but has since moved to Rossendale, Lancs.

The court heard Ibrar was never charged with manslaughter because it was accepted he did not intend to kill Mr Anderson, but prosecutor Daniel Fugallo said: "He had no idea what he was supplying and took no steps to ascertain it."

When he appeared at Oxford Crown Court for sentence, Adam Gersch, defending, said he now admitted supplying the drug and felt remorse for his "naivety and stupidity".

Jailing him, Judge Anthony King said: "I do not know how or why you had this substance with you. "I am not prepared to accept the account that you now give that you found it in the taxi. I just simply do not know.

"You now admit your guilt. It is a pity that you were not brave enough to do so at the first opportunity."

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