TWO LIMERICK men convicted by the Special Criminal Court of breaking into a house in the city to extort money have each been jailed for five years.
Nathan Killeen (21) and Niall Carey (24), both of Hyde Road, Limerick, had pleaded not guilty to trespassing at a house in Ballyclough Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, with intent to commit extortion on July 24th, 2010.
The court heard in the early hours of July 24th last year, Seán Ryan was awoken by a commotion downstairs at his home at Ballyclough Avenue.
When he went downstairs he found two men, one of whom he recognised as Killeen, in an altercation with his son, Jonathan.
Mr Ryan said he and his son forced the two men out of the house, but they returned a short time later and gained access.
They behaved aggressively and threatened Mr Ryan and his son and demanded €3,000, but the amount demanded then escalated to €10,000.
Mr Ryan told the court he was forced to sit downstairs while Killeen went upstairs. Both men then left, demanding €10,000 as they did so.
Mr Ryan said one of the accused got a meat-fork from the kitchen and had held Jonathan Ryan “up against the door with the fork”.
He told the court he feared for his son’s life and that Carey told him: “If you call the cops, we’ll torch the house.”
Sgt Padraic Burns agreed with counsel for the State, Shane Costelloe, that a victim impact statement detailed how Seán Ryan suffered from panic attacks and attended counselling in the aftermath of the offence.
He agreed Mr Ryan described how he felt “panicked” by “gangs of young fellas”, and felt unsafe in his local area.
Sgt Burns agreed a medical report outlined how Mr Ryan had suffered psychological trauma, had been unable to sleep and had been “disquieted” as a result of the incident.
He told the court Killeen had 96 previous convictions, including three for assault causing harm and one for drug dealing, while Carey had 27 previous convictions, including two for making a threat to kill and one for false imprisonment.
Mr Justice Paul Butler, sitting with Judge John O’Hagan and Judge Cormac Dunne, said both men had committed a “serious offence” which had a “serious effect” on an elderly man but which was not at the “higher end of the scale”.
He said the court had regard to Killeen’s background, but noted that “lots of people” who had such troubled upbringings did not go on to extort money from elderly people.
Mr Justice Butler said that, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, the court considered the appropriate sentence was one of five years for each defendant, backdated to when both men entered custody on July 30th, 2010.