Woman gets four years in prison for bottle attack

A WOMAN who left her victim with permanent scarring after she slashed her face and breast with a broken bottle has been sentenced to six years with two suspended.

Ciara Carney, aged 19, of Earlsfort Gardens, Lucan pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing serious harm to Dena Jones on July 4, 2009, on Newcastle Road.

Judge Donagh McDonagh said Ms Jones had been left with “horrendous” and “probably permanent scars” in what he described as an “unprovoked attack”.

“Ms Jones was minding her own business and had actually got off the pavement to let this other bunch through,” Judge McDonagh said.

Then he noted the attack impacted on her psychologically, her employment, her social life and relationships.

He accepted Carney had come from a troubled home, saying to describe her family as “dysfunctional was probably being charitable”.

Judge McDonagh said there was nothing before him to indicate that Carney posed a “threat to society in the future” and noted that she had started drinking at 13 years old and abusing cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy by the time she was 14.

He said the seriousness of the offence itself was at the “upper end” and deserved a sentence of six years.

Judge McDonagh then said he had to give Carney credit for her plea of guilty, the fact that she had engaged in a “meaningful way” with the probation service as indicated by a positive report before the court and that she had since addressed both her alcohol and drug problem.

Judge McDonagh then suspended the final two years of the sentence on condition that Carney keep the peace and be of good behaviour for five years upon her release from prison.

Garda Rory O’Sullivan told James Dwyer BL, prosecuting, that the victim was socialising with her friends in Lucan on the night and on their way home to Hillcrest, when they saw four girls walking towards them.

Ms Jones told gardaí that all she remembered was “one of them came over to me and struck me over the head”. “It felt like a punch at the start but then I was bleeding all over and realised it was a bottle she attacked me with,” Ms Jones said in her statement.

Her friends called an ambulance and her then partner, Denis Gallagher, ran after the four girls but lost them after Carney got in the passenger seat of a stranger’s car which was waiting at traffic lights.

The driver drove her home as he thought she was being chased.

Mr Gallagher ran back to Ms Jones and an ambulance was called. She was brought to James Connolly Memorial Hospital where she received emergency treatment to the eight centimetre laceration on the side of her face and the seven centimetre laceration on her left breast.

Carney was arrested the next day but only admitted she was at the scene. Later she admitted breaking the bottle over Ms Jones: “I don’t know how I caused it. I was drunk really and I have a problem with drink.”