A Bristol drugs courier who was caught with cocaine and heroin worth more than £400,000 and a semi-automatic pistol has been jailed for eight years.

Undercover police watched Omar Tariq as he hid a carrier bag containing nearly a kilogram of cocaine in a Stapleton street.

Tariq, 24, was arrested and police found 42g of heroin and a pistol and silencer in his Stapleton Road bedsit.

In Bristol Crown Court he admitted one charge of possessing a firearm, one charge of possessing a silencer, one charge of supplying or offering to supply heroin, one charge of supplying or offering to supply cocaine and one charge of driving while disqualified.

Police watched Tariq in Park Road, Stapleton, on July 31 last year. He stepped into an alcove with a bag and emerged empty handed.

They found the bag hanging on a spike and 999g of cocaine, worth £339,960 on the street, inside.

Tariq tried to outrun police, but was caught and arrested. As they put him in a car, a man shouted "what's going on" to him. Tariq told him to move his car and asked for his "stuff" to be moved as well – so the officers arrested him too.

Police found traces of cocaine on drugs paraphernalia in Tariq's East Park Drive home in Easton, and two bags of heroin under a mattress in the Stapleton Road bedsit Tariq rented.

They found the gun and silencer wrapped in a sports bag which was covered in Tariq's finger prints.

Jailing Tariq Recorder at Bristol Crown Court, Mr Barry Cotter said: "Firearms must not play a part in any civilised society. It's for that reason Parliament has a minimum five-year term for firearms offences. In relation to the distribution and supply of drugs, it's an endemic plague of this country."