A man who beat his girlfriend around the head with a stone and kicked her in the face has been jailed for one year and eight months. <\/p>\n
Christopher Strickland (37) kicked the woman\u2019s face with force after he had knocked her to the ground, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard. <\/p>\n
Eyewitnesses to the late-night assault heard Strickland calling the woman names and saying \u201cI\u2019m going to f***ing kill you\u201d.<\/p>\n
Strickland of Sundrive Road, Crumlin, Dublin 12, pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to the woman on Kimmage Road, Lower Kimmage on March 3rd, 2019.<\/p>\n
Det Garda Jason O\u2019Carroll told Liam Dockery, prosecuting, that garda\u00ed arriving at the scene found a woman with blood on her head and lip and swelling on her face.<\/p>\n
Witnesses told garda\u00ed that the attacker had punched and kicked the victim in rapid succession around the face and torso. She was on the ground when he kicked her in the face.<\/p>\n
An off-duty garda passing in a taxi followed the attacker as he left the scene and identified him to garda\u00ed. Strickland had blood on him and told garda\u00ed he had assaulted his girlfriend and he was glad he did it and that she deserved it.<\/p>\n
The detective garda agreed with defending counsel Keith Spencer that Strickland was given \u201cmisinformation\u201d that the victim might have been pregnant and \u201che lost it\u201d. The court heard the victim has since died from an unrelated illness.<\/p>\n
Strickland\u2019s 99 previous convictions include assault, theft and drug dealing. Spencer said his client had a long history of substance abuse but has been clean since going into custody.<\/p>\n
The garda witness agreed with Spencer that his client and the woman were in a relationship built around substance abuse, in her case alcohol. He also accepted that Strickland later told garda\u00ed he couldn\u2019t remember anything about the night or the attack and couldn\u2019t explain the cuts on his hands.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the victim\u2019s mother said that after the attack her daughter\u2019s eyes and face \u201cwere in bits\u201d and her blonde hair was \u201cred with blood\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judge Fiona O\u2019Sullivan said this was a violent and sustained attack on a \u201cvery vulnerable\u201d woman.<\/p>\n
She said that Strickland\u2019s life has been blighted by heroin addiction and that he has taken steps towards rehabilitation.<\/p>\n
She said the other mitigatory factors were his plea of guilty and his expressions of remorse, which she accepted as genuine. Taking these into consideration, she imposed a sentence of two and a half years.<\/p>\n
She suspended the final 10 months to support Strickland\u2019s efforts at drug rehabilitation. The suspension is on condition that he keep the peace and engage with the Probation Service for 12 months after his release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who beat his girlfriend around the head with a stone and kicked her in the face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[179451,236263,228901,18798,41682,9,10,18799,12773,62806,36959,18,4507,13,14,236264,70050,6,148801,82044,19,120416,17,11,12,3521,8383,2971,15,16,9579,5,106746,2987,237,17475,786,3700,159214,3887,3888,155329,236265,228908,5196,2431,11833,236266,4070,17135,64259,57120,7,8,86069,1294,44087,236267,1525],"class_list":["post-551530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-70s","tag-80-plus-years","tag-active-seniors","tag-awe","tag-box","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-british-culture","tag-care","tag-chair","tag-comfortable","tag-eire","tag-england","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-food-staple","tag-hat","tag-headlines","tag-heterosexual-couple","tag-hill","tag-ie","tag-inside-of","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-lifestyle","tag-long","tag-love","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-men","tag-news","tag-non-urban-scene","tag-pension","tag-people","tag-plan","tag-planning","tag-relationships","tag-relaxation","tag-retirement","tag-savings","tag-senior-adult","tag-senior-men","tag-senior-women","tag-seniors","tag-sitting","tag-stability","tag-straw","tag-summer","tag-sun","tag-sunlight","tag-surrey","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-two-people","tag-uk","tag-unrecognizable-person","tag-white-dorking-rooster","tag-women"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551530","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=551530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}