Heroin addict gets seven years for handbag snatches

A Dublin heroin addict who was extradited from Holland after serving three years of a six-year sentence there, was sentenced to seven years at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court today.

James Boland, 37, of North Summer St, Dublin 1, who absconded to the Netherlands in 1995, was jailed for "preying on vulnerable elderly women and robbing them".

Boland fled to the Netherlands after being bailed on the Dublin charges, and within a few weeks committed two more robberies which saw him jailed for six years by an Amsterdam court.

The Dutch sentence ended in 1999, but he remained in custody there fighting the extradition proceedings.

Boland pleaded guilty to robbery, larceny and car theft between April and September 1995.

The court heard he punched a 75-year-old woman in the face in Sandymount while robbing her handbag and dragged another woman along who clung to the door handle of his stolen getaway car when he snatched her bag.

Boland had 53 previous convictions and had been in and out of prison for the past 25 years.