Teen on bail in stolen pensioner's purse case

A then13-year-old girl, who took advantage of a 75-year-old woman and stole from her, has been remanded on continuing bail pending sentence by the Dublin Children’s Court

The Romanian girl, now aged 14, had been convicted of trespassing on the woman’s home with intent to commit an offence, on April 13 last year.

Judge Catherine Murphy today remanded the girl, who was accompanied to court by her mother, on bail until November to allow a further pre-sentence probation report on her to be furnished to the court.

The teen girl and an accomplice had called to the woman’s home in Foxrock, Dublin and asked for a glass of water.

The woman agreed to get the water for them, told them to wait at her door as she went to her kitchen.

“I turned around from my kitchen sink and they were standing there behind me but they had not been invited into my home,” she had said in evidence.

She then became nervous as one of the girls acted as a “decoy” and ran upstairs. She threatened to call the gardaí at which they left.

However, she noticed that her purse containing her bus pass, cash and her bank cards was missing from her kitchen. Earlier a judge had said the girl’s behaviour had been “scandalous” and the incident was “sinister and mean".

“The victim was exploited. She had acted out of the kindness of her heart, she wanted to give them a glass of water,” Judge Conal Gibbons had said at the hearing of the case in April

The girl has been out of school for the last five months and spoke little English, the court was told.