westerrn bureau

A 28-year-old mother of three, who was trying to smuggle ganja out of Jamaica to earn money for her school fee, was sentenced to 30 days in prison when she appeared before the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate's court on Thursday.

The woman, Dillan Connell of Mt Horeb and Flankers in St James, pleaded guilty to possession, dealing and attempting to export ganja weighing 1.5 kilograms, some of which was ingested and some found in her vagina.

Connell, who is unemployed, told the court that she had enrolled in a massage therapy course costing $50,000 after the father of her three children left her and she was unable to make the payment. She would have been paid almost $100,000 had she been successful in taking the drugs to Barbados.

Behaving suspiciously

She was seen behaving suspiciously at the security checkpoint at the Sangster International Airport on October 26. She was in line to board an Air Jamaica flight to Kingston with connections to Barbados. She was stopped and interviewed and a search carried out on her person.

During the search a package of ganja weighing less than a kilogram was removed from her vagina.

She was subsequently taken to the Cornwall Regional Hospital after she admitted to ingesting the drug. She excreted 40 pellets of the contraband weighing half a kilo.

Additionally, fines of $2,400 or three months for possession and $12,000 or three months for attempting to export were imposed.