Serial thief jailed for 11 years

A cocaine addict who committed a string of robberies across Dublin’s Southside has been jailed for 11 years by Judge Desmond Hogan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Noel Kinsella (aged 30), of St Anthony’s Road, Rialto, pleaded guilty to offences arising from nine incidents in which he variously robbed cash from shops, threatened employees with knives and stole cars between April and December 2004.

Kinsella has 28 previous convictions for crimes such as robbery, larceny, assault and road traffic offences.

Mr Luigi Rea BL, defending, told Judge Hogan his client had instructed him to apologise for the "hurt, offence, fear and terror" he had caused.

Judge Hogan said his first impression, after hearing evidence in all nine indictments before him, was how industrious Kinsella had been over such a concentrated period of time.

He noted the evidence that Kinsella had co-operated fully with gardaí when interviewed and pleaded guilty to the offences at an early stage. He accepted that Kinsella’s offending was a result of his drug addiction and that the robberies were committed to feed his habit.

The court had also heard that Kinsella escaped from custody while on bail for earlier crimes and was in turn on bail for that escape when he committed his final robbery of €310 on December 30, 2004, at a Spar shop in Dundrum.

Judge Hogan imposed a six-year sentence with consecutive three- and two-year terms for the offences committed while on bail. He suspended these on condition that Kinsella enter into a good behaviour bond for six years following his release and undergo a drug treatment programme.

Evidence was given by various gardaí of robberies carried out by Kinsella and an accomplice on shops, bookmakers and petrol stations resulting in sums of from €15 to €3,789 being taken.

Staff were threatened they would be stabbed and infected with ‘Aids’, and escapes were made in stolen cars. They drove the wrong way up a one way street on one occasion and crashed into another car but were apprehended at the scene after they jumped from the vehicle.

Detective Garda James Mulligan told Mr Luan O Braonain BL, prosecuting, that Kinsella was identified from CCTV footage on another occasion and he agreed with Mr Rea that Kinsella had adopted a "very poor" disguise.

Garda Shane Costelloe said a woman customer in one ‘bookie’ shop who had what she believed to be a syringe held to her neck by Kinsella said the experience was the most terrifying of her life.

Sgt John McGinn gave evidence of Kinsella taking €1000 from the till of a Spar shop in Rathgar while his accomplice robbed €15 from an elderly lady.