AN ELDERLY man goes every day to his local Garda station for company and sleeps under his bed every night, six years after he was tied up, beaten and robbed by a gang at his isolated farmhouse, a court was told yesterday.
Judge Raymond Groarke said the victim was a vulnerable man at the time he was robbed and, to add insult to injury, he had been “shopped” to known criminals by his own cousin.
Darren Finnerty (32), of Ballinasloe with a rental address at Cummer, Tuam, was sentenced yesterday to eight years in prison at Galway Circuit Criminal Court for his part in the robbery of the then 75-year-old widower at his home near Ballygar, Co Galway, on September 18th, 2006.
The judge said the victim now spends hours in the Garda station receiving sympathy from gardaí because he clearly feels insecure and is worried and vulnerable.
He noted there was an element of premeditation in this robbery and, for that reason, he said, he had to impose an eight-year sentence on the accused, with the final two years suspended.
Det Sgt John Considine gave evidence at the sentencing hearing that Finnerty broke into the isolated farmhouse two miles off the main road at 9.30pm with another man and a woman. They kicked and beat the victim before tying him up with a phone cable which they ripped off the wall.
The victim’s cousin, who is since deceased, had told the gang the elderly man had a lot of money in the house and they found €9,000 in a biscuit tin upstairs. They took his car keys and escaped back to Galway with the money, which was never recovered.
Sgt Considine said one co-accused, Christopher McDonagh from Athlone, had been sentenced to eight years in prison with the last two suspended when he was brought before the court in 2009. The woman, he said, had absconded to England.
Finnerty, he said, had been charged in April 2008 but had also absconded to England before his trial in July 2008. He was brought back to Ireland and had been in custody since then.