AN ANGUS man with a “life of criminality” was yesterday convicted of a heroin deal that ended in tragedy with the overdose death of one of the supplied users.

Russell Gray (30)—who has more than 50 previous convictions stretching back to the time he was 16—muttered angrily in the dock at Forfar Sheriff Court after being convicted by a jury of being concerned in the supply of heroin in Kirriemuir last year.

A two-day trial had heard how one of three people named in the indictment faced by Gray had died within hours of injecting the Class A drug in a house in the town, but he had denied actually giving the substance to the victim.

Gray, of Archies Park, Forfar, faced trial before a jury of eight men and seven women on a charge that on May 3 last year, at Glengate, Kirriemuir, he was concerned in the supply of diamorphine to others, and in particular Adele Colville and Keith Troup, both c/o Tayside Police and David Williamson, now deceased.

Gray will now be sentenced on February 14 after being remanded in custody by Sheriff Kevin Veal following the jury’s majority guilty verdict after 50 minutes of deliberation.

The trial had previously heard that David Williamson had died after taking heroin which Colville and Troup said they had bought from Gray outside Kirrie fire station, following a call from the deceased to the accused to set up the deal.

Yesterday the jury was shown video-taped admissions made by Gray that he had passed packets of the drug to Williamson.

In an interview recorded at Arbroath police office, Gray broke down in tears whilst being questioned in connection with the inquiry, following his arrest after a drugs search warrant had been executed at his home.

Initially, in the interview, Gray told officers that Davie (Williamson) “did the deal” with another man in Kirrie, named both in interview and in evidence given yesterday by Gray as a Maxwell Stewart.

Under further questioning he then admitted to police, “OK, I passed drugs, and that was it.”

In a further interview two days later Gray told officers he got four “tenner bags” of heroin from another man and he “gave them to Dave.”

He told officers that he received £40 for the drugs but then jumped in a taxi and had lost the cash “somewhere up the road or in the taxi.”

He then said in the interview he had handed over the four bags of diamorphine to Williamson. Breaking down in tears Gray continued, “I thought it was meant to be split between Keith Troup, Adele Colville and him, I didn’t know he was going to be taking as much.

“I kent Davie for years, he’s got a wee boy and everything, I don’t want to stick anybody in, just charge me,” Gray told officers.

Giving his own evidence yesterday, Gray told defence solicitor Bob Bruce that his withdrawal from heroin due to being held in the police cells had left him in an agitated mental state.

He told the court that at the time he was injecting heroin twice a day and admitted he had not been truthful with the police.

Cross-examined by fiscal depute Donna Brown, Gray said, “The bottom line is, the way I see it is Keith and Adele should be here because they supplied him with the heroin, I never gave Davie the heroin.

“I didn’t tell the truth to the police, there was bits of truth, I was withdrawing, confused, there was a lot of things going on in my head.”

Sheriff Veal, noting Gray’s lengthy list of previous convictions, rejected an appeal from his solicitor for a continuation of bail.