{"id":104879,"date":"2025-10-06T07:43:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T07:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/104879\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T07:43:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T07:43:09","slug":"man-who-stole-from-sports-direct-in-wicklow-aims-to-get-security-job-after-jail-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/104879\/","title":{"rendered":"Man who stole from Sports Direct in Wicklow aims to get security job after jail term"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Sports Direct at Bray Central.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/e2560366-4ac6-4d57-bf3c-c15c8f8b651e.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Sports Direct at Bray Central.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">A 23-year-old man has been sentenced to nine months in prison after pleading guilty to two thefts from Sports Direct stores in Bray and Wicklow, as well as failing to appear before Bray District Court earlier this summer<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Patrick Stokes of Amberley House, Lower Gardiner Street, appeared at Bray District Court via video link from Cloverhill Prison. Mr Stokes pleaded guilty to failing to appear for a previous hearing and two counts of theft.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Mr Stokes failed to appear at Bray District Court on July 9, 2025. He also faced two counts of theft, having stolen two Nike Tech tracksuits worth \u20ac370 from Sports Direct in Bray on April 23, 2025, and additional clothing from the Sports Direct store in Wicklow on the same date.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The court heard that Mr Stokes was living in emergency accommodation at the time of the offences, along with his pregnant partner. His solicitor told the court that her client &#8220;is looking to better himself when he leaves custody,&#8221; and added that &#8220;Mr Stokes wants to find employment in the security sector\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Mr Stokes told the court he is now drug-free and willing to provide a clean urine sample if required.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The court was also told that Mr Stokes has 86 previous convictions and had been released on an unrelated matter on March 16, 2024. Judge David Kennedy said: &#8220;That is a huge number for someone your age.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Mr Stokes\u2019s solicitor said her client had been shoplifting to support his drug habit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Judge Kennedy sentenced Mr Stokes to nine months\u2019 imprisonment on each theft charge, to run concurrently, and fined him \u20ac500 for failing to appear, with five days in default. The prison term was backdated to August 27, 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Funded by the Court Reporting Scheme<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sports Direct at Bray Central. A 23-year-old man has been sentenced to nine months in prison after pleading&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,8900,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-104879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-darragh-mccann","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}