Yellowknife (Apr 04/03) - Yellowknife man Dayl Hein received two years less a day in jail for selling cocaine to an undercover police officer on three occasions.

The 35-year-old father of two plead guilty to three charges of trafficking narcotics in Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Justice Arthur Lutz, of the Court of Queens Bench of Calgary will allow Hein to start his sentence in a month because his family was recently forced to leave their apartment and defence lawyer James Brydon requested that he be allowed to help them settle.

Hein is on probation for two months and one of the conditions of his probation is that he turns himself in after one month, which Crown Attorney Scott Niblock said is a rare sentence.

In his closing statement, Brydon argued that Heins sentence should be lenient because he provides information to police whenever they want it.

His involvement is just as a street level person trying to get along in life, he said.

Brydon said that Hein had done so much cocaine that his nose no longer has a septumathe skin and cartilage between his nostrils.

Hein, who works as a construction worker and holds a third-year apprenticeship as a plumber, told the judge he was fighting to get his life in order since his marriage broke up eight years ago.

Somewhere along the way I got addicted to this drug and it seems Im falling on my face continually, he said.

The court heard that an officer and a civilian police agent asked around a Yellowknife drinking establishment on March 15, looking to buy some cocaine. A woman gave the officer Heins number and they later met in a lounge in Centre Square mall and the officer purchased two grams of the drug.

The police officer ran into Hein the next day at the Gold Range and purchased two more grams of cocaine, this time in the washroom. He was stopped by Hein on the street again the following day and sold one more gram.