"I'm f****d, aren't I?': Criminal who'd raised a glass days earlier knew his time was up
06.04.2024 - 07:35
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
His response to the police was brief, but resigned. "I'm f****d, aren’t I?," Craig Parr said after officers tracked him to a hotel room in Newcastle. They had seized £300m of drugs, and caught him red handed. Just days earlier, Parr had been in a service station off the M25, raising a glass ahead of a daring plot.
He had been tasked with helping transport the ‘immense’ consignment of heroin and ketamine from the south of England to its intended final destination in the north west. Drugs - hidden in bags of rice - which cause misery on the streets, but provide easy money for unscrupulous gangsters.
But as Parr supped from a cold bottle of beer, he and his companions had no idea that they were being tailed. Parr, seen sitting at the right of the table in CCTV from a service station in Essex, led the logistical operation.
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He was tasked with organising the onward travel of 785kg of heroin and 294kg of ketamine, which had been imported into the country. While he was not accused of being behind the importation, or of enjoying the trappings of wealth associated with large scale drug dealing, Parr’s role was to assist in smuggling the drugs from Felixstowe, the largest container port in the UK, to a farm in Lancashire.
But before the load could arrive in the north west, police monitoring the huge load struck at Keele Services on the M6. The driver, a man named Stephen King, appeared to have pulled over for a break.
When they searched the back of the Salford Van Hire van which King had hired a couple of weeks earlier, what they discovered would likely have been beyond the officers' wildest dreams.
More than a metric tonne of drugs was seized, said to be valued