A heroin addict who hijacked a good samaritan’s car has been jailed for 33 months for this and a series of other offences.
Vincent Morey (23), pleaded guilty to seizing the woman’s car by threat of force after she spotted him hitching between Bweeng and Grenagh in Co Cork in sleet and hail before dawn broke on January 13th last.
Morey got into the car and travelled with the woman as far Grenagh, where he produced a screwdriver and ordered her out. He then drove towards Mallow and back to Bweeng, where he crashed the vehicle before being arrested a short distance away.
Det Garda Mick Dolan told Cork Circuit Criminal Court the hijacking and a number of other offences including taking another car and a series of thefts from other cars in Bweeng occurred while Morey was on bail for a robbery in Cork city on November 24th, 2015.
Morey, originally from Mount Nebo Avenue in Gurranebraher, pleaded guilty to robbery at the Gala shop on Blarney Road, where he produced a knife and threatened a female member of staff working there on the day in question.
Det Garda Dolan said Morey got away with €150. He had terrified the young woman, who was six months pregnant at the time. He was later arrested and charged with the robbery, and was out on bail on that charge when he carried out the hijacking.
Difficult family situation
Judge Gerard O’Brien noted Morey had a difficult family situation and had “gone off the rails”, becoming addicted to heroin. He was sleeping rough at the time of the Blarney Road robbery, which he described as a very serious offence.
He had subjected a woman to a terrifying ordeal with a knife but he noted the DPP had placed it on the lower end of the scale in terms of robbery offences. The judge noted Morey had expressed remorse and issued an apology to his victim.
Judge O’Brien sentenced Morey to three years in jail for that offence, but suspended the final 18 months on condition that he remain under the direction of the probation and welfare services to attend to his addictions upon his release.
He also sentenced Morey to two years in jail for the hijacking and other offences from January 13th, 2016.
Because these occurred while he was on bail for the November 2015 robbery, the judge made the sentence consecutive to the first, but suspended the final nine months of this two-year term.
The cumulative effect of the sentences means Morey has to serve 33 months, backdated to January when he was taken into custody after the hijacking and offences in Grenagh and Bweeng.
