Used teleporter to force entry into yard’s office

A SERIES of offences and a poor past record added up to ten months in prison for 40-yearold William (Bill) O’Brien (40) from The Elms, Park Avenue, Gorey.

The District Court sitting in Wexford heard that O’Brien was responsible for a break in at Davis’s timber yard where he used a teleporter to force entry into the office.

He made off from the scene aboard a stolen mountain bike with a leaf blower and a with chain-saw hanging over the handlebars.

He also pleaded guilty to stealing €155 worth of groceries from Lidl and bed linen worth €152 from Tesco.

Boots too was on his shopping list, with an Oral B electric toothbrush worth €64.99 taken and not paid for after he slipped it into his jacket.

Details were given of how O’Brien visited the car park at the church in Kilanerin where he removed a woman’s handbag from a car.

Judge Brian O’Shea was informed of seven previous convictions for theft on the defendant’s record.

Pleading for leniency, solicitor Lana Doherty said that her client lost his father to suicide eleven years ago and O’Brien was the one who found the body.

His marriage broke down and he then started taking Valium, heroin and crack cocaine.

Though he was clean of illicit substances for 15 months after being on a methadone programme, Ms Doherty accepted that he had been using drugs once more until very recently.

The thefts detailed to the court were efforts to raise money in order to buy crack cocaine.

The judge observed that the behaviour described was relentlessly criminal but he noted the guilty pleas and the tragic circumstances.

Consecutive sentences of four months, three months and three months added up to the total of ten months, with no suspension.