{"id":470601,"date":"2026-05-06T03:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/470601\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T03:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:42:10","slug":"tullamore-circuit-court-hears-baby-left-in-back-of-car-after-drink-and-drug-fuelled-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/470601\/","title":{"rendered":"Tullamore Circuit Court hears baby left in back of car after drink and drug fuelled party"},"content":{"rendered":"

A BABY was abandoned in a stolen car after a drink and drug fuelled party in the Midlands last year, Tullamore Circuit Court heard.<\/p>\n

The baby girl, aged about one year at the time, was found with no nappy on and urine in her babygro and when she was brought by gardai to a neighbour’s house she was so hungry she drank two full bottles.<\/p>\n

The incident on August 10 last year was recalled at the Circuit Court during a sentencing hearing for a 30-year-old man who admitted charges of child cruelty, unauthorised use of a vehicle and theft of diesel fuel.<\/p>\n

A garda outlined how on August 9, 2025 a woman picked up the child and its mother and travelled with the child’s father to an apartment in the Midlands town.<\/p>\n

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There was a party in the apartment where cocaine was taken and alcohol was consumed while the baby was put to bed in a different child’s room at about 8pm.<\/p>\n

All the adults continued drinking and taking drugs, Judge Ronan Munro was told, and at one point when the baby’s mother, who was also taking Tramex tablets, \u201cwas in a bad way\u201d, the child walked into the sitting room and was brought back to bed.<\/p>\n

At about 3am the little girl went back to sleep with a bottle and the party continued with \u201ca lot of alcohol and drugs taken\u201d until at about 9am an argument broke out between the child’s mother and the other woman.<\/p>\n

The garda agreed with prosecution counsel Shane Geraghty, BL, that the evidence was the child’s mother threw \u201cthree or four glasses and a candle\u201d at the other woman.<\/p>\n

When the child’s mother was allegedly told to calm down by the 30-year-old man she picked up a knife and it was taken out of her hand by the other woman.<\/p>\n

The baby woke up again and came into to the kitchen where there was glass on the floor. She was picked up by her mother but the other woman told gardai she could not look after the child.<\/p>\n

The apartment was the residence of the woman who brought the parents and baby to the party and she then said she wanted the parents out.<\/p>\n

The accused man said he would seek a lift but the child’s mother took the other woman’s car keys and ran out to the car where the baby was put in the back.<\/p>\n

The child’s mother drove off with the baby’s father in the passenger seat while the car’s owner screamed at them to come back.<\/p>\n

At 10.15am the vehicle pulled in at a filling station near a different town and filled up with \u20ac76 worth of diesel but the car was driven off before any payment was made.<\/p>\n

A report about the stolen car was made to gardai and in the afternoon a guard saw a man, subsequently identified as the accused, walking away from the vehicle outside a house and through bushes.<\/p>\n

The garda found a baby alone in a car seat in the back of the car with no nappy on and the \u201cbabygro soaked through with urine\u201d.<\/p>\n

An ambulance was called and meanwhile the baby was brought to a nearby house and provided with a clean nappy and she \u201cdrank two full bottles in a row\u201d.<\/p>\n

The baby’s mother was then seen shouting outside a house with the woman she had partied with earlier and they were said to be \u201cunder the influence\u201d.<\/p>\n

The mother was demanding to know where her child was and was told she was in garda custody.<\/p>\n

The baby was brought to hospital in Mullingar and after being assessed was released into the custody of her maternal grandmother.<\/p>\n

When the man was questioned by gardai he said he could not remember the car being taken but recalled being \u201con the sesh\u201d and stated: \u201cThem two young ones are a disaster together… the sooner I get out of there the better.\u201d<\/p>\n

He told gardai that he had \u201csmoked a few joints\u201d at the party and later when the car was taken he had \u201cdragged\u201d the child’s mother out of the driver seat and drove himself because \u201cshe could not even get the car into gear\u201d.<\/p>\n

He decided to drive the car even though he had a driving ban himself \u201cthe length of an arm and a leg\u201d.<\/p>\n

The man denied that his child’s feet had been cut with broken glass but admitted she had no nappy on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a stupid night. I will admit that,\u201d he told gardai.<\/p>\n

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Judge Munro was told the man had 131 previous convictions and is currently in prison for a separate offence.<\/p>\n

He had been offending since the age of 13 and had become addicted to drugs but said himself he was \u201cclean\u201d since going into prison last year.<\/p>\n

Defence counsel David Nugent, BL, said it had been \u201cpure chaos\u201d on the night and said the accused man had left the scene where the car was when gardai arrived and the baby was not left on her own for a long period of time.<\/p>\n

Mr Nugent said his client was the youngest child in a large family and had been adversely affected when his mother left when he was six.<\/p>\n

Though he was involved in crime from a young age he had completed his Junior Certificate and was with Youth Reach for a period, along with various periods of employment.<\/p>\n

Mr Nugent said the man was now determined to go a different path and undergo addiction treatment.<\/p>\n

In his own evidence the 30-year-old said he was a father of three who had a new partner and she had borne his third child shortly before he went into prison in November 2025.<\/p>\n

He said his recent time off drugs was the longest he had been clean since he was 13 and he was already linking in with a key worker once a week. He hoped to stay off drugs for good. \u201cWhat’s the point in going on with this? It’s my life I’m wasting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Judge Munro told the man he was an \u201cabsolute menace\u201d when he was on drugs and given his previous offending he was now \u201cin big trouble\u201d and it was \u201cgrim\u201d.<\/p>\n

The court heard his release date for his current sentence is November 2027.<\/p>\n

Mr Geraghty said the maximum sentence for child cruelty is seven years.<\/p>\n

The judge adjourned finalisation of sentencing for the latest offences to November 18 next and ordered the preparation of probation and prison governor’s reports.<\/p>\n

His co-accused, the child’s mother, previously pleaded guilty to car theft and ill treating a child.<\/p>\n

A probation report has also been ordered for her in advance of sentencing on November 18 next.<\/p>\n

Reporting restrictions prevent the publication of any information which would identify the child.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A BABY was abandoned in a stolen car after a drink and drug fuelled party in the Midlands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,3172,5,10902,7,8,146327],"class_list":{"0":"post-470601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-midlands","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-offaly-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories","25":"tag-tullamore-circuit-court"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116525566998455400","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470601","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=470601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}