Car theft addict in the hands of the law

A man addicted to stealing cars faced sentencing yesterday for two more such crimes and the judge asked of the culprit with 214 convictions: “What are we going to do, short of cutting his hands off, which I wouldn’t like to do.”

Judge Aingil Ní Chondúin had just read the background probation report on Jason O’Brien, aged 33, in which his difficulties and past offending were outlined.

The judge said: “I don’t have a magic wand,” adding that it was difficult to know what to do with O’Brien.

Eddie Burke, solicitor, told Judge Ní Chondúin: “He has an addiction, albeit an addiction to taking cars. His modus operandi is to drive off in a car where he finds the keys in the ignition or placed over the wheel of the car [outside a garage].

“He takes them for a drive, he leaves them abandoned or returns them.

“For the first time, he wants to get help. He called to Cork Alliance. That is a first for him.”

Judge Ní Chondúin said: “If he himself had a car and came home and found it gone. he couldn’t get to his job or he couldn’t get a sick child to hospital, how would he feel? People have to work for a car and it is a very important part of day-to-day living.

“Think of who you are hurting and how much pain and grief you are causing.”

The judge noted that the probation service recommended a psychiatric assessment and she adjourned the case for a week, with O’Brien in custody on his latest charges. He is already serving a prison sentence for stealing another car.

In the latest charges, O’Brien, of St Vincent’s hostel, Anglesea Terrace, Cork, stole a van belonging to Kearney’s coach hire in Cork City on the night of April 16. On 8am on April 17 he was seen driving the coach into the Prompto Dispatch yard at Meenane, Watergrasshill, Co Cork, where he crashed into a parked car.

Mr Burke said in the vast majority of crimes committed he did not cause any criminal damage.