An out-of-control 15-year-old boy, who rammed gardaí after he led them on a car chase, has been given an eight-month sentence.
The boy, who spiralled out of control and dropped out of school after he started abusing drugs, had pleaded guilty at the Dublin Children's Court to criminally damaging a Garda patrol car on Dublin's Hardwicke Street on the night of September 3rd last year.
Garda Damien Kildea of Fitzgibbon Street station said in evidence that he had been on patrol and driving towards the Summerhill part of the city when he saw the teenager driving a car. "It failed to stop and broke traffic lights. While he was pursued he rammed a patrol car at Hardwicke Street."
The north inner city Dublin teenager had 22 previous convictions, mostly for motoring offences, the court was told. In March this year he was sentenced to nine months at Trinity House Detention Centre for car theft offences. Last month he was given a four-month sentence for dangerous driving.
Defence solicitor Sarah Molloy told the court it was obvious the boy, who was accompanied to court by a relative, had an "appalling history". However, she told Judge Bryan Smyth he suffered from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
He dropped out of school early after he started abusing amphetamines. Since going into custody he has been receiving drug addiction counselling.
"He sensibly recognised that he was spiralling out of control and realised by himself he needed to go into custody," she said, adding that his mother has arranged a job for him outside of Dublin on his release.
This was to "get him out of the north inner city and the peer group he had been hanging around with".
Judge Smyth described the case as a "very serious matter" and imposed an eight-month term.
At an earlier case the court heard the boy had become "fixated" with motoring offences. On March 30th last he was given the nine-month term for stealing the same car twice within five days.
The court had also heard the boy's parents separated when he was extremely young and he has had no contact with his father in 14 years while his mother had done her best to look after him.