Drink to your heart’s content, but I’ll give you maximum jail
A SLIGO man who was sleeping on the streets and was taken to Sligo University Hospital suffering from hypothermia has been told that he will “kill himself” at Sligo District Court.
Judge Kevin Kilrane told 37-year-old Dean Mahon, Kiernan Avenue, Collooney, that “on many occasions, you are out of your mind with drink and you will kill yourself.
“You will kill yourself either by falling down on the street and fracturing your skull, getting knocked down, or through alcohol poisoning, but you will kill yourself.
“That is up to you and I can’t help you.”
The defendant pleaded guilty to stealing a bottle of Jacob’s Creek wine from Simpson’s Supermarket, Drumacrin,
Bundoran, on January 31. He also pleaded guilty to being drunk and a danger to himself and others and using threatening and abusive behaviour at Sligo University Hospital on February 5, the day after he appeared at the district court. Defence solicitor Tom MacSharry said his client had been in hospital for hypothermia but had engaged with Aubrey Melville, had attended and AA meeting and had “reached a turning point.”
The defendant told last Thursday’s sitting that he was “homeless last week and was sleeping on the street and did not even have a sleeping bag”. He said that, through alcohol, he had fallen, fractured his eye socket and displaced his jawbone.
The defendant was supposed to go to Derry for treatment but did not go and was very sick on Sunday, February 7. He told the court that if he were released, he could go to his mother. She was now prepared to take him back into her home.
The defendant said he had been “detoxed” in the hospital, had gone to an AA meeting and was going to continue in that vein and was booked to go into a treatment centre in seven weeks’ time
Sergeant Derek Butler said the court had been hearing “the same tale of woe for the past two years, so what was different now”.
The defendant said he always thought that he and his ex-partner would get back together but now he knew they would not as she “had a new boyfriend and it was time to move on”. Sergeant Butler said the defendant should blaming other people and he had to help himself.
The defendant said he can’t get accommodation, nobody will house him, had been to see the council twice but they “keep turning me away”. Judge Kevin Kilrane told the defendant that he had “run out of road” because of the way he lived his life. The defendant had served 10 or 11 years in jail in Britain and had been in and out of jail in this country.
On the last occasion the defendant was in court, he said he deliberately offended so that he would have a bed in a garda prison cell.
The judge said it was entirely the defendant’s fault because he lived his life by taking drugs all the time.
As a result, he had slipped down to the bottom of society.
The judge said the defendant had so many public order offences that they were now becoming weekly.
The judge said he was giving the defendant bail.
“You can drink to your heart’s content, but if you are back here again, it will be consecutive jail sentences to the maximum.
“I know that you have said before that you don’t mind going to jail, but I have to make sure that continuous offending of this nature is not permitted.”
Judge Kilrane adjourned the case until today, February 18.