Widower still in fear six years after attack

By Ann Healy

Friday, February 03, 2012

An elderly widower spends every day at his local Garda station for company and sleeps under his bed in terror every night, six years on from when he was tied up, beaten and robbed by a gang at his isolated farmhouse.

Justice finally caught up with Darren Finnerty, aged 32, of Cummer, Tuam, Co Galway, who was yesterday sentenced to eight years in prison at Galway Circuit Criminal Court for his part in the robbery of the then 75-year-old widower at his home in Co Galway, on Sept 18, 2006.

Detective Sergeant John Considine said that Finnerty broke into the isolated farmhouse at 9.30pm with another man and a woman. They kicked and beat the victim before tying him up with the phone cable which they ripped off the wall.

The victim’s cousin, who has since died, had told the gang the elderly man had a lot of money in the house and they found €9,000 in a biscuit tin upstairs. They took his car keys and escaped back to Galway with the money, which was never recovered.

Sgt Considine said co-accused, Christopher "Gick" McDonagh from Athlone, had been sentenced to eight years in prison, with the last two suspended, in 2009.

The woman, he said, had absconded to England.

Judge Raymond Groarke said the victim was a vulnerable man at the time he was robbed and to add insult to injury he had been "shopped" to known criminals by his own cousin. He imposed an eight-year sentence on Finnerty with the final two years suspended.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, February 03, 2012