Personal trainer turned drug dealer couldn’t outrun cops

Gym instructor ‘with links to UDA’ fled across farm with £10k in cocaine

Chris Djorjani admitted £10k cocaine charge

Chris Djorjani admitted £10k cocaine charge

Chris Djorjani

Chris Djorjani admitted £10k cocaine charge

Paul Higgins

June 18 2022 09:06 PM

A personal trainer with alleged links to the South East Antrim UDA has admitted having £10,000 of cocaine.

Standing in the dock of Antrim Crown Court on Thursday, 39-year-old Chris Djorjani admitted having the class A drug with intent to supply on November 12 last year, while a second count of simple possession of cocaine was “left on the books”.

None of the facts were opened at the brief arraignment, but when Djorjani was originally charged, the court heard that at around 4.30pm on that Friday afternoon, “police had occasion” to stop a blue Skoda Octavia on the Carnlough Road in Ballymena.

Although the car was owned by Djorjani, who is originally from Ballymena but who has been bailed to live on the Skeagh Road in Dromara, the tattooed dealer was in the passenger seat and when cops told him to stand to one side, he ran off through a field.

A police constable told the court that as Djorjani fled, he “dropped a package”, which he immediately picked up and, taking to his heels again, he ran through the yard of a nearby farm, jumping over a stone boundary wall into a field, where he was eventually arrested.

Constable Coyle told the court that as officers at the scene noticed some stones in the wall appeared to have been disturbed, a drugs dog was brought into the field and the cocaine package was discovered.

Describing how “250 1/4 kilo” was written on the wrapping, the officer said it had “clearly been pressed” into a block, a technique which “takes an amount of expertise and equipment to do”, adding that police estimate the seizure is worth around £10,000.

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“We have assessed that he is part of a drugs organised crime gang and has links to the South East Antrim UDA,” claimed the officer, who suggested that, with a clear record, Djorjani was a “perfect candidate for supplying”.

That clear record has now been stained and, following his confession, Judge Patricia Smyth said that before she could pass sentence “we will need a pre-sentence report”. Freeing Djorjani on bail, she said she would deal with the case in September.