A drug dealer caught running his County Lines-style operation from the Premier Inn has been spared a jail sentence.

Billy Fuller was seemingly so successful that police found a message on his ‘Oxy’ drugs line phone from another person, saying they were setting up their own operation and inviting the 24-year-old to come in on the enterprise.

His dealing was uncovered on December 1, 2021, after police responded to reports of a disturbance at the M&S store in Kelso Road, Bicester, and followed the alleged culprit back to the Premier Inn.

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Prosecutor Adam Williams told the court another man, said by hotel staff to have been in a customer toilet for a long time, was interrupted doing an act described as ‘preparing the toilet for what would normally be someone retrieving drugs’.

When they then raided Fuller’s hotel room, the officers found £200-worth of cocaine, a 16th of an ounce of heroin and the paraphernalia required to apportion, weigh and package drugs for sale on the streets.

The defendant also had a stun gun disguised as a torch.

Fuller, formerly of Abingdon Road, Oxford, pleaded guilty on the day of his trial to possession with intent to supply class A drugs and possession of the prohibited stun gun weapon.

The prosecution put Fuller’s drug dealing into the ‘significant role’ category, meaning the young dealer was looking at a sentence of four-and-a-half years imprisonment before mitigation and credit for his late guilty plea were taken into account.

But on Tuesday (May 30), sentencing judge Recorder John Hardy KC said he was going to take an ‘exceptional’ course of action and impose a suspended prison sentence.

In the 18 months since his arrest, Fuller had managed to all but turn his life around. He had moved to Bournemouth, was working as a plasterer and had stayed out of trouble.

When he appeared before the judge in March to plead guilty, he was all but unrecognisable to the man officers arrested in December 2021.

In answer to Recorder Hardy’s observation that Fuller’s appearance was very different, the officer in the case replied from the public gallery on Tuesday: “You don’t get many drug dealers who wear suits.”

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Summarising, the judge told the defendant’s barrister: “Do I take away all he has achieved, including the hope of betterment in the future, by sentencing him to immediate custody and, if I do, what public good does that bring about?

“Or do I say I’m really impressed, well done, the way you’ve turned yourself out is a great credit to you, the fact you are in work is a great credit to you, and the way you present yourself in court indicates to me that you have expectations of yourself and a sense of achievement and a sense of a path on which you are going and I should not deflect you from that path?”

He took the latter option, imposing two years’ imprisonment suspended for two years, with 20 rehabilitation activity requirement days with the probation service.