A DRUG addict found hiding with his crack pipe in bushes near the children’s play area in a Keighley park has narrowly avoided jail.

Andrew Sawicki, 30, was found to be carrying 38 wraps of heroin and cocaine, which he later admitted to police he had planned to deal to others for his own financial gain.

Prosecutor Jayne Beckett told Bradford Crown Court that officers patrolling in Devonshire Park at around 11.15am on July 2 last year saw Sawicki “crouching in some shrubbery.” After searching him, police found the drugs, said to have a street value of around £470.

In his police interview, Sawicki said he had bought the drugs “in bulk” with a view to selling them on, but would not give any details of either who he had got them from, or who he planned to sell to.

Miss Beckett said Sawicki’s offending was a “street-dealing” case.

Camille Morland, mitigating, said Sawicki, who had come to live in the Bradford area around nine years ago, had been addicted to class A drugs for “about a decade”.

She said that after leaving a property he had been placed in by the local authority, he had moved to Shipley where “things did not go well.”

She said: “He hobbled on for years, still with an addiction.”

Miss Morland said that since his arrest, Sawicki had moved back to Morecambe, Lancashire, and had re-engaged with his family, also attending sessions to support his addiction.

A report from the probation service said Sawicki, who the court heard suffered from psychosis and mental health issues, was making “good progress” and recommended he be allowed to continue on a drug rehabilitation programme.

Judge Colin Burn told Sawicki: “The guidelines indicate that for someone found with wraps of heroin near a children’s play area in Devonshire Park in Keighley, the first port of call would be a prison sentence of some length.”

But he added that due to Sawicki’s health difficulties, coupled with the support of his family and the probation service, he could take the “exceptional” step to suspend the sentence. Sawicki was jailed for two years, suspended for two years, and ordered to complete a nine-month drug rehabilitation requirement.

Judge Burn said: “This is your first serious offence, but it will have to be your last. This is the only chance you’ll get.”