‘Sorry, wrong house’ says man after samurai sword break-in

A Dundalk man has received a six-month jail sentence after pleading guilty to breaking through a double-glazed house window with a samurai sword last year.

The man, who was already jailed for six months on Tuesday for punching a doctor and headbutting a nurse in the Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry in March 2014, received a further six months jail at the Magistrate’s Court in Derry on Wednesday.

Michael Hanrahan (33), from Glenmore Park in Dundalk committed the offence at Lower Nassau Street in Derry on March 2nd, 2014, nine days before he attacked the doctor and nurse.

Last Friday at the Crown Court in Belfast Hanrahan, who has over 20 criminal convictions, was jailed for 12 and a half months for assaulting police officers.

Wednesday’s custodial sentence in Derry was the third jail sentence he’d received in a six-day period.

Hanrahan, who is a heroin addict, lived at Lower Nassau Street in Derry when he smashed a neighbour’s front window with a samurai sword that was one metre in length.

The court was told that Hanrahan then climbed through the window. Inside the house, in the front livingroom, a man and woman were watching television. Hanrahan said to them “sorry, wrong house”, and then climbed back out through the window he had smashed.

However, he dropped the samurai sword on the livingroom floor and shouted through the window to the couple to return the weapon to him, which they did. Hanrahan was recognised by the couple who gave his details to the police.

District Court Judge Barney McElholm jailed Hanrahan for six months and said the sentence would start when he had completed his current jail sentences.