Man burgled elderly couple’s home while they slept is jailed
A MAN who burgled an elderly couple’s home while they slept has been jailed for 10 months after a judge said it was “absolutely horrific” to break into anyone’s home in the middle of the night.
Thomas Green stole a set of car keys from the house but was unable to take the car from the scene because it had no engine, Blanchardstown District Court heard.
Blanchardstown District Court
He was later identified from fingerprints left on a window.
Green, aged 21, with an address at La Touche Road, Bluebell, pleaded guilty to burglary at a house at Lucan Road, Ballydowd on May 9, 2018.
The court heard an elderly couple and their son were asleep in the house at the time but were not disturbed and “knew nothing” of the burglary until they woke up the next morning.
Between midnight and 7am, Green “jimmied open” a small window and went inside, a garda said.
The accused did not ransack the house but just took the key to a Volkswagen Golf.
He tried to take the car out of the garden but there was “no engine in the car” and he left the key in the ignition, the court heard.
Green was identified from fingerprints left on the inside of a window at the front of the house.
He was arrested on a later date and made no reply to the charge after caution.
Green had a large number of previous convictions for offences including unauthorised taking of a vehicle, robbery and dangerous driving.
The accused was pleading guilty at the first possible opportunity, his solicitor Matthew Kenny said.
He had an “extensive history” of offending, having been “criminalised as a child,” when he had “negative influences in his extended family.”
Sadly the accused had not walked away from offending as a young adult. He had paid a “heavy but deserving price” for his behaviour and was serving another sentence with a release date in 2022, Mr Kenny said.
On release from prison, he would have to address the anti-social influences on him and try to live outside of that, Mr Kenny added.
“I regard anyone breaking into a private house in the middle of the night to be absolutely horrific, and the person inside could actually die of fright on meeting a stranger in the house,” Judge Jones said, imposing sentence.
The sentence was to run from the date of conviction, he said.
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