A WOMAN who ‘looked after the interests’ of a drugs gang who had set up shop at the home of a vulnerable person in Banbury has been jailed.

Taylor Mapp, of Crab Mill Lane, Coventry, was set to stand trial for two counts of possession with intent to supply Class A drugs - cocaine and heroin – but had a change of heart and pleaded guilty to both.

Oxford Crown Court heard at her sentencing on Wednesday how the 21-year old had been part of a group of Coventry-based criminals who were running a county lines operation in Banbury.

They had launched an operation at a vulnerable person’s house - a practice known as cuckooing, in which to deal their drugs.

Mapp was caught after police raided an address at Vicarage Court, Banbury, in August last year and while there, the court heard, she tried to hide both drugs and cash.

Police later seized 1.68g of heroin and 1.79g of cocaine and Mapp was arrested and charged.

In mitigation at her sentencing hearing Clare Marshall-Evans said that her client had had a particularly troubling upbringing involving domestic violence within her family environment.

She argued that this had led to Mapp getting involved in controlling and abusive relationships which in turn led to her carrying out offences including being given a jail term for bringing drugs into prison.

For that offence, the court heard, she had only been released out on licence just eight months before she was later caught with the Class A drugs.

Sentencing, Judge Peter Ross said: “This was a county lines operation being set up on a vulnerable person’s flat in Banbury.

“Your role here in Banbury was to protect the interests of the Coventry drug gangsters, because that is what they are, who had set up the drugs operation in a vulnerable person’s home.”

Mapp was jailed for three-and-a-half years for each count to run concurrently.