Due to your correspondent being otherwise occupied over the last two weeks in particular – as some of you will have noticed – the weekly crime medley has been absent.
The spicy circumstance surrounding that absence will be known to some of you, and I thank you for your many messages of concern and support.
Now, here is the last while in crime.
A teenager was sent to jail yesterday after he attacked a man in his sixties, knocking him over on his mobility scooter “for fun”.
The man was smoking outside a Centra on Capel Street in Dublin on 11th of February last year when Elliot Toale pushed him hard causing him to fall on his face and hand.
The man’s hand was fractured in the fall after the unprovoked attack, his nose began to bleed, and his dentures snapped in two. A number of his fingers were also injured,
Toale, who is now 18 but was described as being “a youth” at the time of the attack has 23 previous convictions.
He stole a knife from the Centra shop and chased a Scottish tourist who had tried to intervene up the road with it, brandishing it aloft.
Judge Martin Nolan sentenced Toale to two years in prison but suspended the final 16-months due to Toale’s youth.
A 30-year-old woman was sentenced to five months in jail after she and her friend went in search of her ex-partner with a Samurai sword in toe.
Elvira Oreidein of Newtown Hall, Hazelbrook Square, Whitehall Road, Dublin 14 had told her friend that her ex partner was “abusive” before the pair paid a visit to his address only to threaten an unrelated man with the sword.
The court heard that Oreidein and her friend then pushed their way into the building looking for her ex after threatening to cut the man who had tried to close the door.
Judge Monika Leech sentenced Oreidein to nine months in prison with the final four months conditionally suspended for two years. Oreideinwas later released on bail pending an appeal against her sentence.
A Nigerian man who signed for a box of tea containing €174,000 worth of cannabis.
Emmanuel Moses, aged 51, of Glenlara House, Mount Kennett Place, Dock Road, Limerick pleaded guilty to knowingly permitting or suffering the importation of drugs.
The court heard that Moses was granted refugee status in Ireland in 2016 after coming here in 2011 and has never engaged in gainful employment.
The Limerick Leader reported comments of prosecuting barrister John O’Sulllivan, “He told gardai he met John Clay, a native of England, in Mount Kenneth. He said Mr Clay asked him to sign for a package of baby cream. Searches were conducted on John Clay. Gardai believe John Clay is completely fictitious,”.
Judge Tom O’Donnell handed down a fully suspended two year custodial sentence and ordered that the drugs be destroyed.
A former senior official at the Department of Justice was this week convicted of possession of child abuse material and handed a fully suspended sentence.
Niall Colgan (39) admitted to possession of explicit videos featuring male and female children who appeared to be under the age of ten and was handed a fully suspended sentence before Judge Martin Nolan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Tuesday.
Colgan of Muckross Park, Perrystown, Dublin 12 was reportedly stripped of his position at the Department of Justice after allegations of his possession of child abuse material came to light.
The child pornography found in Colgan’s possession consisted of both grade one (the worst) and grade two child sex abuse material although Colgan says he “never touched children”.
This was stored among what a prosecuting Garda called an “extensive collection” of legal, adult heterosexual, gay and transgender pornography. 300 worth of cannabis was also found in Colgan’s possession on the 1st of February 2022.
The Journal reported details of the child abuse material found on Colgan’s iPhone as being a, “1 minute and 32 seconds long and depicted a pre-teenage girl with her genitals exposed, masturbating using what appeared to be curling tongs.
The second video of 1 min and 9 seconds depicted a boy who appeared under the age of 10 performing sexual acts with a female.
Both videos were deemed to be category one while the two images, one of a pre-teenage girl and the other showing a teenage girl, were placed in category two.”
A man was brought to court charged in relation to an attack on an elderly woman in a nursing home in the Midlands of the 29th of April. .
Peter Keaney, 54, of Hillside Close, Monksland in Athlone was brought before Judge Bernadette Owens at Athlone District Court on Wednesday, May 1 last charged with assault causing harm to an
85-year-old woman at Sonas Nursing Home on Ballymahon Road, Cloghanboy in Athlone
Keaney was remanded in custody with Gardaí advising the court that there would be objections if bail was sought and requesting to be notified within 48hrs of any such applications being lodged.
A man who sexually assaulted a woman while she slept after a house party in Bunclody was handed a four year custodial sentence this week.
The Enniscorthy Guardian reported that meat factory worker Agon Menhei, who has an address at 37 Ryland Road, Bunclody, was given the assistance of a Kosovan language interpreter before Judge Cormac Quinn.
The court heard that Menhei had been socialising with the victim on the night of the attack and that while the pair had kissed and held hands on that occasion the victim was not interested in anything more.
The victim had been introduced to Menhei on the evening preceding the attack where he was a friend of the victim’s female friend’s Kosovan boyfriend.
The victim, a mother of two from Bunclody, told the court that at the time of the attack she had been feeling low and had accepted the invitation to socialise.
Menhei told Gardaí that he had not consumed alcohol and had been drinking cola and redbull that night. It was reported that a number of other men who were in the company of the group had also not been drinking due to their Islamic faith.
Having fallen asleep on a sofa later in the night the victim awoke to find her bottom clothing had been removed and Menhei pushing his erect penis against her vaginal bone.
She said she did not know whether she had been penetrated or not.
Menhei attempted to leave Ireland after the assault and booked a flight the next day.
This flight was turned around after departure after Gardaí contacted the airline telling the crew that a wanted individual was on board.
The victim said the incident had robbed her of her carefree side and that she was shocked that someone she had never met before could treat her in that way.