Thief jailed for taking car fitted with tracking device
Gardaí were able to trace rental vehicle and catch serial offender
A MAN who stole a rental car without realising it was fitted with a tracking device has been jailed for four years.
Gardaí tracked Alan McDonagh, 33, to the N7 motorway after he stole the hire car in Dublin city centre.
He had first burgled the home of the person renting the car and found the vehicle’s keys in the house. The court heard that when the burglary victim realised the car had also been stolen, he contacted the Europcar rental company and gardaí used tracking information to follow the vehicle around Dublin.
Garda David Corcoran told Noel Devitt BL, prosecuting, that the victim had returned to his home on Camden Street in Dublin to discover an open door and some furniture items moved.
He discovered that three sets of designer sunglasses and car keys were missing and realised that his rental car, which had been parked around the corner, was also gone.
Gardaí were alerted and intercepted McDonagh on the N7 near Naas, Co. Kildare, a short time later. McDonagh had been on bail at the time for other offences.
He pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to burglary and stealing a car at Camden Street Upper on September 8, 2017. Judge Melanie Greally had previously adjourned sentencing to allow McDonagh time to come fully off methadone.
Under a separate charge, McDonagh also admitted robbing a young woman of her purse and its contents at St Stephen’s Green East, Dublin 2, on November 3, 2017. Gardaí got a call one morning from a priest living in Dublin city centre who had spotted three men throwing a wallet and bank cards into his garden.
Gardaí rang the person who owned the cards and found her extremely upset, having just been robbed by three men in St Stephen’s Green. The woman said she had noticed the three men on her way to work and heard them intimidatingly singing the children’s nursery rhyme ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’.
She became suspicious and quickened her step, but one of the men approached her and grabbed her bag, spilling the contents.
She said she felt terrified and saw all three men picking up the contents of her bag and running out of the park. The three men were all identified on CCTV footage and two other men are also before the courts.
McDonagh, of Market Mews, Maryborough Village, Portlaoise, Co. Laois, has 173 previous convictions – including 31 for burglary, the court heard.
Keith Spencer BL, defending McDonagh, said his client had written letters of apology to both victims. Mr Spencer said his client had had a very difficult childhood and was ‘the product of his environment’, but had managed to stabilise on methadone and planned to wean himself off the drug completely within the next month.
Counsel for McDonagh cited a probation report describing him as having a ‘disarming, selfdeprecating sense of humour’ and a ‘particular charisma’.
The court heard that McDonagh requested to serve his sentence at the Midlands Prison in order to be near his family and to be away from bad influences in Mountjoy.
Judge Greally accepted that McDonagh wants to become drug free. She suspended the last year of a five-year prison term on condition that he keep the peace.
She also ordered that he engage with the Probation Service for 12 months after his release and remain drug and alcohol free.
She imposed a concurrent term for the robbery offence, which she said involved a considerable amount of force and was extremely frightening. All sentences are backdated to July 18 last, when McDonagh went into custody.
173 previous convictions