A man facing a six-year jail term for attacks on elderly people received further sentences yesterday on charges at Roscommon Circuit Court.
Aidan Fallon (27), of Rinnegan, Lecarrow, Co Roscommon, was jailed for six years last Wednesday, after pleading guilty to robbing and falsely imprisoning two elderly people. He was brought back into court later that day and pleaded guilty to robbing Mr Michael McDermott (83) of his life savings of £20,000 at Monksland, Athlone, on October 12th, 1996. Judge Kennedy yesterday sentenced Fallon to seven years' jail on that charge and also imposed an additional, consecutive two-year sentence on five other burglary charges which the accused admitted. The sentences imposed yesterday are to run concurrently with the six years already imposed.
Judge Kennedy refused leave to appeal the severity of the sentences, describing Fallon as "a nasty scoundrel" whose actions had blighted the victims in their old age.
The court was told that four masked men burst into the home of Mr McDermott and his sister, Annie (73), at 2.20 a.m. Ms McDermott was punched in the face before being tied up by the hands and legs and put lying down on a bed. Her brother was also tied up, and one of the men sat on him and leaned on a piece of timber as it stuck into his chest.
Garda Derek Raftery told the court that Ms McDermott thought she was going to die. When she finally freed herself and went to her brother in his room, he told her: "Everything I have is gone. They got everything."
Mr McDermott told his sister that the men had taken £20,000 in cash, which he had in the house. It was his life's savings.
Mr Martin Giblin SC, for the defendant, said that Fallon had not got a penny of the money and had not been the ringleader. However, in reply to Judge Kennedy, he accepted that his client had "fingered" the house. The court heard that the defendant committed the offences while on bail.
Judge Kennedy said that the charges arising out of the attacks on the McDermotts' house were more serious and treacherous than the previous cases against the accused.
Also at Roscommon Circuit Court yesterday, Patrick Ward (21), of Blackberry Lane, Athlone, was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for a burglary at the home of a 74-year-old widow, Mrs Kathleen Fallon, on October 19th, 1996. The court was told that Mrs Fallon had not returned to live in her house at Dysart following the incident. One of her three assailants brandished a knife and she was locked in her bedroom in darkness. Her house was ransacked before the raiders took off in her car with a cashbox. She managed to escape through a bedroom window but fractured her wrist in the process. Her car was later found but had been set on fire.
Sentencing Ward to four years for burglary and imposing a twoyear concurrent term for the unauthorised taking of her car, Judge Kennedy said the picture painted was one of absolute scandal where a woman had been hunted out of her home.