20 months jail for man in ‘violent and unusual case’
By Sonya McLean and Isabel Hayes
A man who tried to hijack a car while attacking a woman and her two children, having just assaulted a jogger and the man who came to her assistance, has been jailed for 20 months.
Swiatoslaw Jaroszynski (34) was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder at the time after he was the victim of an armed robbery in the shop where he worked.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court
He had also taken two different kinds of medication for back pain along with cannabis.
He had no recollection of the events.
Garda Paul Doona said the woman was out jogging on the outer ring road in Clondalkin, when Jaroszynski grabbed her by the shoulder and tried to put his tongue in her mouth.
He knocked her to the ground and tried to get on top of her before a passerby, Robert Keogh, came to her help.
Garda Doona said Mr Keogh was assaulted during the struggle that followed before Jaroszynski ran out into the middle road and forced a woman driving, with her 11- and nine-year-old children, to stop her car.
Jaroszynski jumped onto the bonnet of the woman’s car and headbutted her windscreen causing it to crack. He then smashed the back passenger window and grabbed the woman by the throat and tried to bite her neck.
Garda Doona said Jaroszynski’s head and hands were covered with blood at this stage. The woman managed to escape out of the vehicle but he remained in the car with her daughter and younger son.
He grabbed the children and tried to bite them and continued to lash out in the vehicle hitting the boy and girl. Other motorists stopped their vehicles and managed to get the woman and her children to safety before the gardai were alerted.
Garda Doona told Lisa Dempsey BL, prosecuting, that minutes earlier Jaroszynski had been involved in a head-on collision with another vehicle and had fled the scene. He was attending to this accident when he got the call about the attacks.
He agreed with Jennifer Jackson BL, defending, that in his 16 years working as a garda he had never seen a person behave in the way Jaroszynski had that day.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. It took numerous gardai to restrain him. He appeared completely out of it,” Garda Doona said.
Jaroszynski, of Aylmer Road, Newcastle, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to three charges of assault causing harm in relation to the two women and Mr Keogh in Clondalkin on May 26, 2018. He also pleaded guilty to unlawfully interfering with a car on the same date.
His previous convictions include a suspended sentence for a drug offence from Dublin Circuit Criminal Court and a conviction for robbery from Poland. He has been prosecuted separately in the District Court for offences arising from the car accident earlier that day.
Sentencing Jaroszynski to 20 months imprisonment on Tuesday, Judge Martin Nolan said it was a “very violent and unusual” case.
“It’s bizarre that he attacked the car in the way he did,” the judge said, adding Jaroszynski’s behaviour was “disgraceful”.
The judge accepted Jaroszynski was suffering from PTSD, but said he exacerbated the situation by taking the drugs. He said that but for the mitigating circumstances in the case, he would have imposed a sentence of four years.
