Woman in syringe case threatens suicide

A woman who was married when she was 16 has threatened in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to kill herself because sentence on her…

A woman who was married when she was 16 has threatened in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to kill herself because sentence on her was adjourned and she has been kept in custody.

Bridget Joyce (19), who has a three-year-old child, was before the court on syringe-robbery charges and was remanded in custody by Judge Joseph Mathews because she breached bond conditions under which he granted her bail just before Christmas last.

Judge Mathews adjourned sentence until July next on the charges, which she has admitted, so that arrangements could be made for drugs treatment for her.

After her solicitor had spoken to her, he relayed a message to her defence counsel, Mr Michael O'Higgins BL, who told Judge Mathews his client had intimated she would take her own life rather than wait for sentence in July.

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Judge Mathews said the defendant was a deeply hurt young woman who needed a lot of help that had to be organised properly.

The court heard at the December hearing that one of Joyce's syringe-robbery victims was still under counselling.

Joyce, from Pigeon House Road, Ringsend, robbed this woman of jewellery, threatening her with a blood-filled syringe, on a moving bus at Aston Quay on January 29th, 1997. She told the woman she had AIDS.

Garda Martin Harrington said that Joyce was arrested on Christmas Day in Wicklow for causing criminal damage and was jailed for four months for that on January 6th. She was also serving three months imprisonment for a purse robbery at Christ Church on December 30th.

Judge Mathews said that on December 19th he made efforts for Joyce that no one else would in spite of obvious Garda forebodings but only because an Eastern Health Board employee who knew her volunteered to supervise her in her home up to December 29th.