Jail for ‘vicious’ daytime robbery

A Cork man who denied any part in a vicious lunchtime attack on an Albanian man, claiming he was having lunch in a café with his wife, was jailed yesterday for seven years with the last 18 months suspended.

Last week at Cork Circuit Criminal Court the five women and seven men on the jury delivered an 11-1 majority verdict against Trevor O’Sullivan.

The victim, 35-year-old Viron Kaja, is an Albanian national living in Ireland for the past 16 years and married to an Irish woman with whom he has two children. In a victim impact report he said the vicious robbery had deeply affected him.

One man beat him about the body with a long stick. The second attacker caught him around the neck from behind and gouged his left eye with his fingers.

They robbed him of €50, his phone, and a silver tobacco box given to him by his grandfather.

Mr Kaja said the attack had changed him and that he had recurring nightmares of the crime and had failed to complete a welding course he was doing at the time, leaving him unemployed in Galway where he lives with his family.

Trevor O’Sullivan, 38, with an address at Roche’s Buildings, Richmond Hill, Cork, had pleaded not guilty to a robbery charge.

Judge Gerard O’Brien said yesterday: “The injured party was looking for accommodation when he was viciously assaulted by Mr O’Sullivan acting in tandem with his brother. It was an extremely violent pre-meditated attack. They left the victim in Spring Lane bleeding profusely on the ground.

“No remorse has been shown. No apology has been given to an innocent man going about his own business.

“His [O’Sullivan’s] heroin use increases his risk of re-offending exponentially.

The judge said the victim impact statement “makes very grim reading. He cannot stop thinking about the attack and now lives in constant fear.Vicious random attacks cause immense insecurity in the community.”

Detective Garda Edmond O’Donoghue testified that the injured party’s face was bruised and bleeding when gardaí found him.

A description was given of two tall males in jeans and T-shirts being the attackers.

“I made my way back down Thomas Davis Street and I saw two males heading towards the front of The Coffee Pot on Thomas Davis Street. I stopped and spoke to the two males,” Det Garda O’Donoghue said.

He further testified that a garda colleague told him that the injured party had identified the two males as the culprits.

Cross-examining, defence barrister Paula McCarthy said Trevor O’Sullivan’s brother, Thomas, had admitted carrying out the robbery and said that Trevor had nothing to do with it and Trevor’s wife said he was in The Coffee Pot with her at the time of the robbery.

The defendant’s brother, Thomas O’Sullivan, 31, of 2 Comeragh Close, The Glen, Cork, had pleaded guilty. He will be sentenced at a later date.