Raider who blew up ATM gets life
Judge makes an example of thief after late-night explosion left his accomplice with serious injuries
A MASKED raider has been jailed for life for blowing up a cash machine in a late-night robbery that left a man seriously injured.
James Deeney, 50, denied causing the blast, claiming he was walking his dog in the area at the time.
But yesterday, at the High Court in Edinburgh, he was convicted of blowing up the ATM at his local Farmfoods in Clydebank, Dunbartonshire, on January 11 last year.
The explosion went badly wrong, leaving his male accomplice, who cannot be named for legal reasons, with skull and brain injuries.
A judge told Deeney he was making an example of him for his ‘bold and brazen’ crime as he ordered him to serve a minimum ten years in prison.
Judge Michael O’Grady told Deeney: ‘You showed an utterly wicked indifference to the life and limb of others.
‘You chose to carry out your crime with a quite breathtaking disregard for the potential consequences of what you were about to do.
‘It is clear you had no idea whatever of the power or effect of the explosive you chose to use. That is bad enough.
‘But worse still it is abundantly clear you had no regard whatever for the dreadful risk this posed to entirely innocent members of the public.’
Deeney went to the store around 11.30pm. A tube from an acetylene cylinder was inserted into the cash machine and gas was ignited, causing a blast that badly damaged the ATM and left the other man suffering serious injuries.
Deeney was also convicted of forcing open the ATM in the explosion with intent to steal. Jurors were shown CCTV footage of the blast, which blew the accomplice off his feet and knocked him out. The blast victim was taken to hospital, suffering skull and facial fractures and bleeding to the brain.
The judge said ATMs were for the benefit of the public and Deeney’s actions could have had dire consequences because they were used at all hours.
He told Deeney: ‘Even at that time of the evening, you simply had no way of knowing who might be in the vicinity and what might befall them because of your actions. There is another factor to be considered. It is clear that in recent times attacks on ATM facilities such as this have become disturbingly common.
‘The time has come in my view to send out the message that anyone foolhardy enough to engage in such crimes will face dire consequences.
‘As it happens, Parliament has recognised the gravity of using explosives by laying down a mandatory penalty for contravention of this statute; that is life imprisonment.’
The judge said the only issue for him was to fix a minimum term to the life sentence, known
‘No regard for risk this posed’
as a punishment part, and he handed down ten years.
He told Deeney the courts have long made it clear that premeditated and planned attacks for profit on banking premises would be regarded as extremely serious.
Defence counsel Niall McCluskey said Deeney’s last court appearance was about 15 years ago and the crime marked an escalation in the seriousness of his offending. He said he continued to deny the offence and had been assessed as presenting a low risk of reoffending.
But the judge said he found it fascinating that ‘an individual who has taken an acetylene cylinder and blown up part of an ATM is assessed as a low risk’.