A DUBLIN woman has been jailed for three years for burgling an elderly woman’s home with a 17-year-old accomplice.
Winnie Cash (39), St Maelruan’s halting site, Tallaght, pleaded guilty to burgling the house at Finglas Park, Finglas, Dublin, on September 9th, 2006, by using a teenage girl to distract the elderly owner in the back garden while she went upstairs to steal property.
Garda Joe Glackin told prosecution counsel Anne-Marie Lawlor, in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, that neighbours spotted the mother-of-three hiding in bushes while her young accomplice tricked the pensioner into leading her around the back of the house to see if her friends were in the garden.
Garda Glackin said gardaí met Cash coming down the stairs armed with a screwdriver and carrying a bag of stolen property.
He told Ms Lawlor that Cash, a mother of three teenage boys, had 16 previous convictions for burglary and 12 previous convictions for theft in the last 10 years.
Judge Patrick McCartan acknowledged Cash’s troubled history, including a violent marriage that ended when her alcoholic husband committed suicide, the loss of four brothers to murder, suicide and illness, her late drug addiction and periods of homelessness when she was a child. However the judge noted that she “persisted in her life of crime”.
Judge McCartan described her criminal record as “appalling” and said she had “no regard for her children” when she “preyed upon” an elderly woman living alone.
The judge suspended the last year of her sentence, saying it was the best he could do for her.