The police thought it was a burglar, but what they found in the house was more sinister

A drug-dealing ‘cuckoo’ took over a bedridden woman’s home, then threw a pot of boiling water at police when he was caught.

Mark Lloyd, 20, was a street dealer for part of a wider criminal organization which had taken over the vulnerable woman’s home in Birkenhead in a criminal practice known as cuckooing. He was caught on August 22, 2023, when undercover officers saw him cycling to the house, where he put on a balaclava before going inside.

Officers initially suspected Lloyd was a burglar, and when he exited the property, they approached him and identified themselves. Lloyd then ran back into the house and into the kitchen, where he grabbed a pan of boiling water from the stove and threw it at PC France, who ran after him.

He threw a bag he was carrying into another room and tried to throw his mobile phone into a downstairs toilet before being apprehended by PC France. A “protracted struggle” ensued, in which Lloyd punched the PC in the face before being pepper-sprayed and taken away.

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His ‘grafted’ phone was recovered from the toilet and messages relating to the sale of drugs were found on it. His bag contained 28 packets of crack cocaine worth around £280 and 11 bags of heroin worth around £110.

Prosecutor Derek Jones, at Liverpool Crown Court today, June 10, said: “The address was occupied by a bedridden lady. In the living room the defendant ran past her, there was an elderly lady in a hospital bed, and the bag of medicine thrown by the defendant landed on the bed next to her.

“The police went in and found the drugs. She then pointed to a DVD box in the room… £1,100 was found in it. Checklists were also found in the room with the amounts indicated there.”

He said it was “a classic cuckoo operation”, where a vulnerable person’s home is taken over by criminals to store and traffic drugs.

Lloyd, of Alwen Street, Birkenhea, pleaded guilty to two counts of possession with intent to supply Class A drugs and assaulting a police officer.

Des Lennon, defending, said Lloyd, who had three previous convictions for five offences, including assault and possession of a bladed article, was “very sorry and ashamed” of his actions. He said: “In the right circumstances, this is a defendant more than capable of staying out of trouble and more than capable of behaving.

“He had an addiction to cannabis from the age of 15 and that addiction inevitably led him to where he is today.” He said the 20-year-old was “immature” and had ADHD, which “caused him to make very bad choices, very bad decisions that put him in real danger.”

Judge David Aubrey KC said: “This address was used for the purpose of supplying drugs and as a result a very frail, elderly, bedridden woman and her home were exploited. At least it would appear that this address was used to store drugs and certainly money. The money was found in a DVD case.

“He (Lloyd) may not be an organizer, but he still decided to use that address. He is the one who owns the graft phone. He is the one who goes out on business”.

Sentencing Lloyd to a total of 27 months in a young offenders’ institution, he said: ‘Drugs cause misery, they cause despair, they cause poverty and you were involved in that illicit trade. You were a classic street dealer and there were clearly others. organizing the operation.

“But you knew what kind of operation it was and that operation included a very serious aggravating feature … living at that address was an elderly, bedridden, frail woman, and this court has no doubt that she was exploited as a result of this operation, in which you played a part.”

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