A CONVICTED heroin dealer and addict who bit a security guard on the face and nose has been jailed for 18 months by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Jason Doyle's sentence is to start on March 1st, 1998, when the balance of a four year term imposed last June for possessing £150,000 worth of heroin for supply is suspended.
The courts have been told the heroin found in a Ballymun house on August 25th, 1994, was under the control of the jailed drugs baron Tony Felloni, who is serving a 20 year sentence for that and other offences. The house owner was given a five year suspended sentence for allowing his premises to be used as a distribution headquarters for heroin.
Doyle (23), of Cromcastle Court, Dublin, pleaded guilty to assaulting a security guard, Mr John Byrne, occasioning him actual bodily harm, at Northside Shopping Centre on December 2nd, 1994. Garda Joseph Keeley said Mr Byrne told Doyle he could not bring his bicycle into the shopping centre. Doyle then attacked the security man.
Mr Loan O Braonain, defending, said his client was undergoing treatment in prison for heroin addiction. If he had more than two years to serve in custody, he would be removed from the programme because of the danger of relapse in jail.
Judge Cyril Kelly described the situation as "extraordinary". He suspended the balance of the 18 month sentence from October 1998 and added: "If I run the sentence after October 1998, he gets no treatment".