A SHOPLIFTER who was challenged by a security guard at a Carlisle supermarket reacted violently, a court heard.

Ross Blacklock, 24, later blamed his behaviour on the effects of drug withdrawal - though he had earlier been caught by the police working as a street dealer, selling heroin and crack cocaine.

He admitted a raft of serious offences.

They were being concerned in the supply of crack cocaine and heroin, possessing both drugs with intent to supply; an actual bodily harm assault on the security guard, theft and causing criminal damage.

Prosecutor Maxwell Cope outlined the facts.

He said police became aware of a county lines drug dealing operation with links to Merseyside that was operating in Carlisle and they established a link with Blacklock. They caught up with him on January 18 on Greystone Road.

He was carrying multiple wraps of both heroin and cocaine.

The defendant later entered his guilty plea to the drugs offences on the basis that he was street dealing for only two days after a member of the Merseyside drugs gang moved into his property.

His payment was in drugs.

Outlining the assault offence, Mr Cope said it happened on July 8 after a security guard at Carlisle’s London Road Asda store was told of a shopper – the defendant –attempting to leave the store without paying for a bag full of goods.

“[The guard] approached him and asked to see inside the bag, and the defendant maintained that the items were from Poundland,” said the prosecutor. 

"A scan showed that not to be true.”

When the guard said the defendant could leave but he would be banned from the store, Blacklock told him: “I’ll split your head open.” He then punched the security guard, shouting abuse as he pushed him into a door.

He returned moments later and punched the man again, chipping a tooth. In a statement, the guard later said it took ten days for his facial swelling to subside.

The ten-minute incident had left him anxious about going to work. He added: “I’m frightened of being assaulted again and not sleeping very well.”

Mr Cope also described how Blacklock turned violent as three police officers tried to arrest him, spitting at one, and breaking another’s spectacles.

He tried to headbutt a third officer.

Gerard Rogerson, defending, said two themes lay behind the offending: a fractured childhood, in which Blacklock went into care at the age of 14; and a Merseyside based county lines drugs operation which exploited the defendant at a time when he was in the grip of addiction.

Blacklock’s home was taken over.

“He accepts what he did was wrong and that he should not have involved himself in such an operation,” said the barrister. At the time of the assault, Blacklock was “rattling” from drugs withdrawal.

“He felt sick when he saw the CCTV [of the assault],” continued Mr Rogerson. “He accepts the security guard was simply doing his duty, being there to protect the public.

"This defendant is only 24.

“But there comes a time when a man has to be more than the sum of his problems and he recognises that now.”

Blacklock had also now found work, and was a valued and trusted member of staff at the business involved.

Judge Michael Fanning recognised the “fractured” nature of Blacklock’s upbringing and that he was “under pressure” to deal drugs yet he knew the consequences of drug taking when he agreed to sell cocaine and heroin.

Of the assault, the judge said: “You repeatedly punched him and it wasn’t just one punch; you returned to continue to harm him.

!Nobody wants to go to work in fear that they will be attacked.”

He jailed Blacklock, of Holmes Avenue, Carlisle, for three years and three months. Judge Fanning added: “The public has to know that drug dealers and violent offenders must go to prison.”