Broke Garda’s leg after pulling fake gun

A Dundalk Garda sergeant’s leg was broken during a terrifying early morning incident in a taxi outside the station during which a realistic-looking pistol was pointed, and the trigger pulled, at him and his colleague.

Details of the attack on the officers, which happened in the early hours of April 17 last year, were revealed for the first time at Dundalk District Court last week. And it was also revealed that the defendant had been released from a psychiatric unit in Louth just a week before the ‘outrageous’ incident.

Dean McGinley, (34), 6 Assumption Place, Dundalk pleaded guilty to a number of charges arising out of the attack including assault causing harm to Sgt. Charley McNulty, resisting Garda Hugh Jordan who was trying to arrest him and possession of a realistic imitation firearm.

Judge Flann Brennan was told how McGinley, whom reports said suffers from bi-polar disorder, had got into a taxi with a couple he didn’t know around 5am and had refused to get out. The taxi driver brought the mini bus to the station where Sgt. McNulty and Gda. Jordan told McGinley to get out.

The defendant replied: ‘You and who’s army are getting me out of here?’ The two Gardai got into the mini bus but McGinley produced a realistic-looking pistol from his pocket and pointed it at them, pulling the trigger a number of times. Gardai later said they believed the weapon was real and Gda. Jordan tried to disarm McGinley.

There was a struggle and the gun hit the roof of the vehicle, breaking up as it turned out to be plastic. The two officers continued trying to restrain the defendant, and Sgt. McNulty squirted pepper spray at McGinley but ‘it had little effect’.

The defendant ‘ charged at Gda. Jordan with clenched fists’ while pointing the rest of the gun and shouting: ‘I will ‘f **king kill you’.

Once more, the pair tried to restrain him, but McGinley turned and charged at Sgt. McNulty ‘with considerable force’ and ‘ stamped on his foot’ resulting in a serious leg break for the officer.

McGinley fell on top of Sgt. McNulty and Gda. Jordan managed to get the handcuffs on him and arrest him before the defendant was taken to the Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda where he was treated for minor injuries.

Solicitor Dermot Monahan said his client, who has two previous convictions, for public order, had been released from St Bridget’s Hospital in Ardee just a week before the attack on Gardai, even though, the solicitor alleged, McGinley’s mother had ‘pleaded with them’ to allow him to remain.

Mr Monahan said McGinley is ‘ now in a stable condition at the moment’ and the defendant ‘deeply regrets the injuries to the sergeant’.

The solicitor added: ‘He has no memory of this incident. He had been released from the hospital even though his mother pleaded with them not to’. He also pointed out the gun was ‘ a toy one’, though Mr Monahan added: ‘Producing any type of weapon to the Gardai is wrong, especially considering the terrible events that have happened to Gardai in this district’.

He said McGinley was unwell at the time of this incident, though that ‘doesn’t take away from what he did’. A forensic psychiatrist had diagnosed the defendant as having bi-polar disorder but McGinley is now taking his medication and will be on it ‘in the long term’.

McGinley is, Mr Monahan said, ‘a very different man from the one who did this’. He asked the court to ‘ take into account that he was suffering from an illness’.

But Judge Brennan said that ‘ lots of people have bi-polar disorder’ and added: ‘I also see (from the report) that he was taking drugs, benzodiazepine. They were not forced down his throat.

‘He’s going to go to jail if I don’t find an overwhelming reason not to. This was an outrageous offence. I don’t accept for a minute that he has a mental illness of any sort.

‘I don’t want to minimise bipolar but I don’t see it as any excuse for what he did’.

He adjourned the case to September 28 for a probation and community service report’. The judge added: ‘If he puts a foot wrong, he can forget about any possibility of not going to jail, however slim it is’.