A Dublin man involved in a raid on a filling station in Co Monaghan in which a gang member was killed when a hijacked car crashed was jailed for 2½ years yesterday.
Troy Spratt (20), Snowdrop Walk, Darndale, pleaded guilty at the Circuit Criminal Court in Monaghan to charges arising from the incident last September 12th.
He had faced a number of charges, including hijacking a car at Drumgeeney, Carrickmacross, belonging to Thomas Rogers, Dundalk, and attempting to rob Mr Rogers.
He was also charged with deliberately crashing into a Garda patrol car, causing damage to the vehicle and injury to Garda Joan Marley and to Garda Paul Everard.
He was also charged with robbery at McCaughey's filling station, Broomfield, Co Monaghan, and with threatening to kill and unlawfully attempting to imprison Marlene McCaughey and Michael O'Reilly.
Judge Matthew Deery was told that one of the three gang members, Michael Brady (24), from Coolock, was killed when the hijacked car crashed at a roundabout beside the Dublin/Belfast MI motorway, a short distance from Ardee, Co Louth.
Charges against a third man, Patrick Healy (21), Buttercup Park, Darndale, who was allegedly the driver of the crashed vehicle, were adjourned to a further sitting.
In sentencing Spratt to 2½ years in prison, Judge Deery said that while the charges were all "very serious", it was in Spratt's favour that he pleaded guilty and appeared to have had a lesser role in the escapade than the others.
Det Sgt Fergus Treanor, Carrickmacross, said the three men travelled to Monaghan from Dublin in a stolen vehicle and raided McCaughey's store and filling station off the main N2 Dublin/ Derry road between Carrickmacross and Castleblayney.
After the raid the gang, still in the stolen four-wheel drive vehicle, rammed a garda car which gave chase, damaging it and injuring the two gardaí.
The four-wheel drive was damaged in ramming the garda vehicle and the gang then hijacked a car belonging to a motorist who was on his way to work. Tom Rogers (64), Dundalk, was injured and left bleeding on the roadway after being dragged from his vehicle.
Det Sgt Treanor said there were several reports of the car being driven "very dangerously" at speeds of up to 100mph (62 km/h) as it travelled towards the MI near Ardee.
It crashed, killing Mr Brady who was in the front passenger seat.
Spratt was injured in the crash and was later arrested after he was discharged from hospital in Drogheda.
Defence counsel Seán Moylan SC said that while Spratt had admitted his involvement in the chain of events, he was not a "prime mover" in the escapade and had played only a minor part, having remained in the back of the vehicles for most of the time.