A TEENAGE girl who started on drugs when she was 12 and was caught carrying £20,000 worth of heroin for the Felloni drugs ring has been jailed for 4 1/2 years.
Paula Lynch (17), of Botanic Road, Dublin, had to have a packet containing 27g of 54 per cent pure heroin removed from her vagina at the Rotunda Hospital after her arrest. Two other similar packets had been removed earlier in a Garda station by a doctor.
Mr Luigi Rea, defending, agreed with Judge Cyril Kelly that if there had been the slightest leak from any one of the packets it could have been fatal for Lynch.
She was "a very silly young woman who rebuffed the chances given her earlier this year by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court and would spend the next two Christmases in detention, Judge Kelly said.
Lynch was caught during Garda operation "Family Tree", directed against the Felloni drugs ring, the court was told by Det Garda Seamus Boland.
She pleaded guilty in May to having heroin for supply on April 14th, 1996, and was remanded on bail for sentence. Judge Kelly ordered her to stay away from her boyfriend, Luigi Felloni, and to live with her mother while on remand.
But since her remand, she had left school, was staying out late, had stopped drugs treatment at Coolmine after only three days, and her urine analyses had proved positive for drugs on various dates recently. She only attended twice last month for analysis.
Judge Kelly noted said Lynch began abusing cannabis when she was 12 years old, then progressed to ecstasy and LSD. She began smoking heroin at 14 and then moved to skin popping heroin.
"By acting as a courier for a major drags player, she was helping to spread her problem to other young people, with the devastating effects we are all too aware of. She is vulnerable and must be put into custody," said Judge Kelly.
Det Garda Boland, of the North Central Divisional Drugs Unit, said that as a result of information the unit kept premises on Botanic Road under observation. Lynch and two others entered it on the third night, and gardai followed with a search warrant.
Lynch gave a false name and date of birth, and when her identity was established, she claimed she was pregnant. The doctor was called and removed the first two packets of heroin.