A WOMAN who killed a violent drug dealer from Burnley after he threatened to sell her as a sex slave has been sent to prison for three years.

Heather Ackerley, 21, stabbed Kye Gorton, 25, with the kitchen knife he had been using to cut crack cocaine.

Ackerley was today starting the jail sentence after pleading not guilty to murder but admitting manslaughter on the basis that she did not mean to kill him.

Carlisle Crown Court heard Ackerley told police she did it because, after having sex with Mr Gorton at a house in Torrisholme, Morecambe, to pay him "in kind" for the drugs he had given her, he became abusive and violent and accused her of stealing £100 from him.

Sentencing her, Mr Justice Penry-Davey said: "Whatever his way of life, he had a right to live and you killed him."

Anthony Morris QC, defending, said Ackerley had fallen under the spell of boyfriend Tommy Howard after falling in with bad company while at college.

He said she met Kye Gorton -- who had 104 criminal convictions for violence, dishonesty and drug dealing offences -- just the day before she killed him after she and Mr Howard went to Burnley to buy drugs. Mr Gorton returned to Morecambe with them and she agreed to have sex with him in return for the crack cocaine and heroin he gave her while visiting their flat, he added.

"She felt she had no option but to agree," Mr Morris said. He said Mr Gorton later turned violent -- pursuing her across the living room as she cowered in the corner -- and threatened to kidnap her and sell her to gipsies.

She picked up the knife he had been using to cut up the crack cocaine and stabbed him once in the chest, the court was told.

Mr Gorton staggered upstairs but died from a wound which penetrated his lung and pulmonary artery.

Mr Morris said that since the killing Ackerley, who he said comes from a decent, hard working family, had given up drugs, gone back to college and hoped to go to university next year.

"The time she spent with Mr Howard seems like a very bad dream," he said.

He said that Ackerley and her parents had had to move from their home in the North West because of threats made against her since the killing.

Mr Gorton, of Airdrie Crescent, Burnley, had lived in a Burnley and Padiham Community Housing property -- a former council house -- with his girlfriend.

His mother, Susan, of Girvan Grove and other family members declined to comment on the death.

In October 1998, Mr Gorton, then of Hargher Street, Burnley, pleaded guilty at Crown Court to supplying heroin and handling stolen goods and was jailed for two years.