Teenager set fire to jacket of mentally handicapped pensioner

A TEENAGER who set fire to the clothes of a mentally handicapped pensioner was yesterday given a two-month suspended sentence.

The boy, who was 15 at the time, was heard to laugh when he used a cigarette lighter to set fire to a jacket worn by the 71-year-old man who had a mental age of 10.

Judge Terence Finn heard yesterday that since the incident in West Cork last year, the youth had straightened out his life, which at the time was blighted by alcohol and mixing with bad company. When the case was first heard last November, evidence was given that Denis O’Driscoll was standing in a queue outside a mobile chip shop when the youth came up behind him and used a cigarette lighter to set fire to his jacket.