Croydon teenager jailed for smuggling cocaine

Pic: Valerie Everett

A teenager from Croydon who was caught smuggling £400,000 worth of cocaine through a Miami airport was sentenced yesterday to a year behind bars.

Ayesha Olivia Niles, 18, of Vermont Road, Upper Norwood, was arrested at Miami International airport on October 21, 2011. She was held at a juvenile detention centre in the US and at her trial yesterday pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking and conspiracy to traffic cocaine.

Niles was returning to London via Miami from Kingston, Jamaica, when she was found smuggling almost 30 pounds of cocaine in cake mix boxes.

Her attorney Robert Lamons said she has been jailed for 364 days and will get credit for the time she has already served from when she was arrested back in October.

According to a Miami-Dade Police arrest report at the time, Niles claimed that she didn’t know what the substance was but said “she suspected that the activity she was involved in was suspicious but she did not question it.”

Federal customs agents selected her for screening and found the class A drugs stuffed inside 24 boxes of JF Mills Rich and Moist luxury cake mix. In Florida, drug traffickers can face a sentence of life in jail.

Prosecutors previously stated that the student mother Niles, would be charged as an adult as she turned 18 three just days after her arrest. She was however, sentenced as a youth and a first time offender.

Last year Niles also featured on Channel 4’s 4thought.tv calling for better sex education in schools.

When she completes her sentence at the Dade County Jail, she will be deported back to the UK.

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