Alcoholic vigilante to be sentenced for assault on shop worker

A Dublin alcoholic who suspected a member of his AA group to be a paedophile will be sentenced later for possessing a knife with intent to intimidate.

Edward Conroy (aged 38) confronted this AA group member with the knife, then turned on a Congolese shop worker standing outside a nearby Centra because he thought the man was intervening in the dispute.

When gardaí later asked him why he had the eight-inch blade he said: “I was going to kill a paedophile and do your jobs for you.”

Conroy, of Stanway Avenue, Crumlin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possessing a knife with intent to intimidate at the Lower Kimmage Road Centra on April 12, 2009.

He has 16 previous convictions for mainly public order offences.

Garda Rioghnach O’Sullivan revealed that Conroy waved the knife in front of the shop worker’s face after turning away from the person whom he suspected was a paedophile, but the Congolese native managed to grab his assailant from behind and restrain him inside the Centra until gardaí arrived.

Gda O’Sullivan told Mr Cormac Quinn BL, prosecuting, that Conroy made a racist remark to the shop worker as he struggled with him in the shop.

She said when she later asked Conroy why he thought he had been arrested, he replied: “I was arrested because I was warding a paedophile off young girls around the city.”

Conroy explained that he had found the knife on a bridge near Kimmage and kept it in his garden prior to the incident.

He said he then carried the blade to the AA meeting where he had expected to see a particular group member.

Gda O’Sullivan told Mr Quinn that the shop worker had not been Conroy’s intended victim on the night and had just been standing innocently outside the shop when the incident happened.

The garda agreed with Ms Martina Baxter BL, defending, that her client claimed he had consumed five cans of beer that day and confirmed he had had a “smell of alcohol on him” on arrest.

She further agreed that Conroy’s previous convictions were mostly drink-related.

Ms Baxter submitted to Judge Tony Hunt that her client said he had been intimidated by the man whom he thought was a paedophile and had carried the knife to protect himself.

Judge Hunt remarked that in a psychological report handed to him, Conroy had been quoted to say: “I think the judges are all paedophiles.”

He adjourned sentencing pending a probation and welfare report but told Ms Baxter the offence had “an unpleasant smack of, not only racism, but vigilantism which is something we could do without.”