Terminally ill man jailed over 4,819 prank calls

A TERMINALLY ill man who made thousands of nuisance calls to the emergency services has been jailed for one year.

Derek Guildea, 61, made a total of 4,819 phone calls to emergency services, with the volume of calls and ambulances sent out to him impacting on the ability to respond to genuine calls, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard.

Guildea, of Trimbleston, Hamlet Lane, Balbriggan, Co. Dublin, pleaded guilty to three counts of persistently making telephone calls for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety between January 2021 and October 2022. The court heard the calls were made to the Garda emergency control room, the National Ambulance Centre emergency control room and the 999 emergency call answering service.

He also made a threat during a menacing phone call to a paramedic, saying he would ‘have him killed stone dead’, and told another emergency service call taker that he would have his kids killed.

Judge Pauline Codd said that by his actions, Guildea created a situation whereby ambulances and fire brigades were misdirected to him. She noted he made threats to emergency services personnel and that an ‘extraordinary number of people were affected by his conduct’.

‘The sheer volume (of calls) had an impact on the services and an impact on the delivery of care to other persons who were in need at the time,’ the judge said.

She said the most aggravating factor in the case was the duration of the offending conduct and the extraordinary extent of phone calls made by Guildea. The judge referred to one of the victims in the case, a Dublin Fire Brigade worker, who said he was fearful for himself and his family in the wake of the calls.

The judge handed down a sentence of two-and-a-half years, with 18 months suspended on a number of conditions, including that Guildea desist from contacting emergency services unless in the event of a genuine need and then through a third party. She said he would have received a longer sentence but for the fact he is terminally ill. She backdated the sentence to when he went into custody last October.

Detective Garda Ross Rowan told Fiona Crawford BL, prosecuting, that Guildea made 437 calls to the emergency control room at the Garda communication centre, 756 calls to emergency control room at the National Ambulance Service, and 3,623 calls to 999.

The National Ambulance Service reported that Guildea’s calls were a constant, almost daily, problem during the period. The court heard that even through Guildea was known as a regularly making false calls, the emergency services could not ignore his calls if they were told there was a medical issue.

Gardaí spoke to Guildea and the calls would reduce from time to time, but always resumed.

Guildea, who has 18 previous convictions, told gardaí he was a ‘bit surprised’ when the volume of calls was put to him. He said the calls occurred when he was drunk, and that he had been diagnosed with a terminal illness in 2008. He said he did not wish to hurt anyone and described being lonely. Paddy Jackson BL, defending, said his client had lung cancer and had been very unwell for a sustained period.

Said he’d ‘have him killed stone dead’