Man held fake gun to taxi driver’s head for 2 hours

A LIMERICK taximan thought he faced certain death as he was forced at gunpoint to drive for two hours around the city late at night.

Convicted criminal, Mark Ryan, aged 25, of Lenihan Avenue, Prospect, tried to get the driver to get money from an ATM at one point, but the transaction could not be completed.

In another attack months earlier, Ryan slashed a 60-year-old man across the face with a knife and was found a short time later wearing a sweatshirt soaked in his victim’s blood.

Ryan, who had 79 previous convictions pleaded guilty yesterday at Limerick Circuit Court to false imprisonment of the taximan, threatening to kill, unlawful seizure of the taxi, assault, possessing an imitation gun, and assault causing serious harm to the man he stabbed.

Detective Garda Brian O’Connor told the court that Ryan got into the taxi on Edward St at about 12.30am on February 12, and immediately produced what appeared to be a gun.

Over the next two hours — with the gun at all times pointed at the taximan’s head — he forced him to drive around the city.

Det Garda O’Connor said the terrified taximan — a non-national — was 100% certain he was going to die.

Ryan was later arrested and the taximan’s mobile phone was found in his pocket. He had taken about €70 in coin from his victim.

The court heard that, on October 31, 2010, a resident in Moyross, aged 60, went to his front door at about 8pm to investigate a noise outside. On opening the door he was confronted by two men. One armed with a knife slashed him across the face and as the victim tried to defend himself, he received further stab wounds to the arm and chest.

The attack, the court, was carried out over an alleged debt of €750 owed by the victim’s son.

Judge Carroll Moran, jailing Ryan for six years, said he shuddered to think the sentence he would have imposed had Ryan gone for trial and been found guilty by a jury.