A homeless man who repeatedly stole toothbrushes from a Dublin pharmacy despite being arrested several times has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Mareks Treinovskis (32) went into the Grafton Street branch of Boots pharmacy eight times last year to steal electric toothbrushes and razors worth a total of €4,323, a court heard.
None of the toothbrushes were ever recovered.
However after one theft, gardaí apprehended Treinovskis outside the Grafton Street store and seized almost €400 worth of stolen razors from him.
Passing sentence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Melanie Greally asked the investigating garda if anything particular had drawn the accused to the Grafton Street branch of Boots.
The garda replied that Treinovskis “kind of figured out” that the security guard at the Grafton Street store did not start work until 11am, and that all of the thefts had taken place between 8.30 and 9am.
Treinovskis pleaded guilty to four counts of theft carried out between February 20th and September 25th, 2017. A further four counts were taken into consideration.
The investigating garda told Tom Neville BL, prosecuting, that Treinovskis was first arrested in April last year after being identified on CCTV carrying out two separate thefts of Braun electric shavers and an electric toothbrush.
He was remanded on bail but continued to steal Oral B electric toothbrushes and razors from the store three more times before being arrested again last September.
Treinovskis was again charged and remanded on bail but carried out three further thefts of toothbrushes at the store until he was arrested a final time and went into custody last November.
He has 56 previous convictions, all of which were dealt with at District Court level, including theft, criminal damage and road traffic matters.
Aoife O’Halloran BL, defending, said Treinovskis had stolen the goods to feed his heroin addiction. She said her client had arrived in Ireland from Latvia during the Celtic Tiger and had worked in construction for eight years.
Ms O’Halloran said Treinovskis had been drinking with friends a number of years ago and had been offered a joint which he thought was cannabis, but turned out to have been laced with heroin.
Since then, she said, Treinovskis had struggled with heroin addiction on and off but was now clean of all drugs and attending a treatment programme at Merchants’ Quay.
The court heard that Treinovskis has a young daughter with whom he has intermittent contact although he would like to remedy this.
Judge Greally accepted that Treinovskis had had a good work record and good relationships, but that his addiction to heroin had “rendered all of that part of his past”.
She said although Treinovskis claimed to be drug free, she had no evidence to support this. Treinovskis was sentenced to 18 months on all counts, backdated to November 11th, 2017.