Teenager jailed for three years for unprovoked attack

A young Ballymun resident has been given three years' detention for an unprovoked attack on a neighbouring family after a night of "binge-drinking and tablet-taking" last year.

Liam Scanlon (aged 19) of Shangan Avenue, Ballymun punched and kicked Mr Patrick Kiely as he lay on the ground outside his home at Old Town Road, Santry on July 14, 2007 and threatened to kill his wife, putting a broken bottle to her face when she tried to stop the beating.

Scanlon told Mrs Kiely: "I'll f*****g stick this (bottle) in you, I'll stick this in your face, " before warning her: "There's a bullet with your name on it" when she tried to pull him off her husband, who was recovering from a recent heart attack.

Garda Richard Herity told prosecution counsel, Ms Tara Burns BL, that Mr Kiely had known his assailant from when he was "a young fella" and that the unprovoked attack, which left him with extensive bruising, forced him and his family to move from their home of 23 years.

Garda Herity said Scanlon, who claimed he'd been drinking and taking tablets that night, told gardaí on his arrest: "See that pox Patrick Kiely, I'm going to burn his gaff down."

Garda Herity said Mr Kiely heard a window smash in his home and around 6.30am and encountered Scanlon and another man coming up the path toward him, when he opened his front door.

Garda Herity said the two men immediately started punching and kicking Mr Kiely to the ground in front of his wife and children.

Judge Patrick McCarton said in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court: "This was a very very brutal attack. Kicking a man on the ground, whatever the circumstance can never be condoned."

He considered Scanlon's "appalling record" with gardai since 2005 and noted from his attitude in court, expressed through "the occasional smirk and shrug of the shoulder" that he has "a long way to go to grow up".

He suspended the last year of Scanlon's detention.