A man with 228 previous convictions who raided a Dublin petrol station armed with a knife has been sentenced to three years and three months in prison, with the final six months suspended.<\/p>\n
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard the victim left her job as a result of the robbery.<\/p>\n
Lee O\u2019Brien (39) of Reuben Walk, Rialto, Dublin 8, pleaded guilty to robbery at Circle K, Dundrum Road, Dundrum, Dublin 14, on June 3rd, 2021.<\/p>\n
Among O\u2019Brien\u2019s previous convictions are offences including robbery, possession of knives, theft, burglary, assault, as well as drugs and road-traffic offences. He was not on bail at the time of the petrol station robbery as he had recently been released from custody. <\/p>\n
Passing sentence on Friday, Judge Orla Crowe said this had been a deliberate and organised offence, with O\u2019Brien bringing a knife to the shop.<\/p>\n
She said it had been a deeply frightening ordeal for the victim, which impacted her job. She said the woman had been providing a service for the public and then had to contend with this criminal behaviour.<\/p>\n
Judge Crowe noted since going into custody, O\u2019Brien has attempted to detox and was seeking a suspended portion to the sentence. She took into account that he had apologised.<\/p>\n
She said the case had been delayed by Covid and could have been dealt with earlier, but noted he had also taken a trial date, failed to appear and took a bench warrant.<\/p>\n
Judge Crowe imposed a sentence of three years and three months, with the final six months suspended.<\/p>\n
Sergeant Donal Tully told Liam Dockery BL, prosecuting, that O\u2019Brien approached a staff member at the counter armed with a knife and demanded all the notes in the tills. A total of \u20ac350 was handed over.<\/p>\n
Sgt Tully said CCTV in the area was reviewed and O\u2019Brien was seen running into an apartment where he changed clothes and left on a bike. A backpack was retrieved from where he had been seen to delay behind a tree. His DNA was found on a cap and hoodie inside the backpack.<\/p>\n
Following identification of O\u2019Brien on the CCTV footage, he was arrested in June, 2023.<\/p>\n
The injured party did not submit a victim-impact statement, but the court heard she left her job as a result of the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man with 228 previous convictions who raided a Dublin petrol station armed with a knife has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,6057,18,13,14,6,789,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-300624","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-diplomacy","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-horizontal","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115947979792941842","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300624","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=300624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}