HE WAS CAUGHT CREEPING AT FARM
PAT QUIRKE’s arrest for burglary involved two incidents when Mary spotted him on CCTV after triggering her house alarm, but only one was revealed to the jury at his trial.
Quirke was arrested on suspicion of burglary on March 16, 2013. The arrest came after Mary Lowry’s house alarm went off while she attended her father’s funeral on Friday, March 15. When she returned home and looked at the CCTV footage, she spotted a man in the adjacent fields, prowling around and acting suspiciously. She knew it was Pat. This incident was not revealed in court.
The jury heard that several months earlier, on December 3, 2012, while Mary and the boys were away, the alarm was triggered. When they got home and realised what had happened, Mary asked her son to help her view the CCTV footage.
There was Pat, at 11.45am, handling her underwear on the washing line in the sheds, looking in through her windows, then putting a key in the front door that set off the alarm, causing him to run away. He was also spotted over at the postbox, peering inside and checking for mail. Gardaí arrived, reacting to the alarm, but Pat was safely hidden away while they were on-site. He re-emerged into the open once the gardaí were gone. After watching the footage, Mary informed the gardaí about Pat’s snooping. They called to her house to look at the CCTV footage and to take a statement from her, but she refused to make a formal complaint about Pat entering her home. Conscious of the fact that Quirke’s son had died several months before, Mary opted for a less incendiary approach and instead instructed her solicitor to terminate his lease on the farm.
When he appeared on the CCTV images again in March, she knew it was time for action and immediately rang the gardaí. She had given him a chance before, but now she was happy to press charges.
Gardaí couldn’t identify Pat on the footage from March 15, but he was clearly visible on the footage from December 3, 2012. Using that, and the evidence that he had taken a house key, on March 16 at 8.45pm they arrested him on suspicion of burglary.
Pat was later released without charge in the early hours of March 17.
In January 2014, he was charged with burglary and handling stolen goods (the key to Mary’s house) at Fawnagowan on December 3, 2012. The charges were later dropped.