A woman who stabbed a security guard when asked to stop smoking in a Burger King toilet has been given a two-year prison sentence, with one year suspended.
Marina Nolan (24), of Brookfield Court, Tallaght told gardaí she would do it again in the same situation.
Garda Michelle Stafford said: "She was very aggressive and angry at that time. Crazed was the only way I could describe her."
Garda Stafford said Nolan claimed she was unsure if she had any communicable diseases and declared: "Let them suffer for six months to see if they have Hep C or HIV."
The woman pleaded guilty to assault and producing a knife at Burger King, O'Connell Street on January 17, 2006.
Judge Katherine Delahunt said she had to take Nolan's violent past during which she had amassed 30 previous convictions into account and imposed a sentence of two years with the final year suspended on conditions.
Garda Stafford told prosecuting counsel, Garnet Orange, that when the security guard went to investigate with a fellow employee who had reported smoking in the female toilets, they observed cigarette butts on the floor inside one of the cubicles and he knocked on the door.
Nolan stepped out with her hands behind her back but when the security guard told her smoking was not allowed and asked her to go outside she lunged at him and stuck a Stanley knife in his leg.
He pushed her out of the way and went back to the restaurant where he collapsed while his colleague locked herself in a toilet cubicle. Staff put down shutters cutting off access to the toilet area and alerted gardaí.
Garda Stafford said she found the security guard lying in a pool of blood with a trail of blood down the stairs.
She saw a Stanley knife on the floor and forced open the door of the cubicle where Nolan was hiding.
The woman lunged at her with a second Stanley knife and was restrained by a number of other gardaí.
Garda Stafford said Nolan told gardaí she had been clear of HIV and hepatitis C on her last test but had been "spiked by a young one with both" since then and did not know her current status.
She said she had been "scratching" herself with the knives in the toilets and after admitting stabbing the victim said she would do it again in the same situation.
Garda Stafford agreed with defence counsel, Pieter Le Vert, that Nolan was a different person now from the "troubled" woman who attacked her and had made a "remarkable improvement in her life".
Mr Le Vert said Nolan had taken a large dose of her prescribed tranquillisers on the day she attacked the victim and had bought the blades with the intention of harming herself.
He said she came from a respectable family and her problems had stemmed from an incident in her childhood which had caused immense difficulty for her. Mr Le Vert said she had been abusing drugs and alcohol but had since "pulled herself up by the bootstraps" and was in employment and in a stable relationship.