A man has been found by the Special Criminal Court to have been the raider who left his phone at the scene of a botched armed robbery before hijacking a woman’s car to flee the area.
Trevor Byrne has 41 previous convictions, including some in connection with the robbery of an off-licence. During that incident he pointed a gun at gardaí, got into an unmarked garda car in an attempt to escape and also held a gun to a taxi-driver’s head as he was pursued by gardaí.
He received sentences ranging from two to eight years for those offences and was released in November 2009.
Byrne was last December jailed for nine years, having been found by armed gardaí in a back garden cabin where a loaded handgun had been stashed.
On Thursday, the non-jury court convicted the 41-year-old, from Cappagh Road, Finglas West, Dublin 11, of robbery, possession of a firearm, false imprisonment, threatening to kill and unlawfully seizing a vehicle used in a getaway in 2010.
Byrne had pleaded not guilty to the five charges arising from the armed robbery by two males of BoyleSports in Applewood Village in Swords, Co Dublin, on March 19th, 2010.
However, the court was satisfied that a mobile phone dropped at the scene during the robbery was Byrne’s and that the defendant had been captured on CCTV in the bookies on the day.
Byrne had told gardaí that the phone could have been an older one that once belonged to him and claimed to have had a phone stolen from him.
Texts to ‘Ma’
In his judgement, presiding judge Mr Justice Michael MacGrath said that texts from the phone to a number saved as ‘Ma’ the day before the robbery “identically” matched numbers also saved as ‘Ma’ found on two more of Byrne’s phones.
Mr Justice MacGrath said it would have been incredible for the phone to have been “stolen and then brought back to the scene the next day by someone who looked like the accused”.
Three members of staff at the bookies said they were put in fear of their lives and threats were made to a woman who Byrne and another male car-jacked outside the shop.
The woman gave evidence of one of the men telling his accomplice during their getaway that he could not believe he had dropped his phone at the scene. They eventually released the woman on a country road but took a portion of a letter she had in her handbag and threatened to come and find her if she went to gardaí.
Mr Justice MacGrath said that he was satisfied with the good quality of the CCTV from the bookies from which gardaí identified Byrne, who looked towards the camera upon entering the premises.
During his trial, counsel for the prosecution said the evidence against Byrne was “overwhelming” and that there was “no suggestion that these crimes weren’t committed” but that the only thing for the court to decide was if Byrne committed them.