Dublin teenager remanded over burglary and knife charges

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

A 16-year-old Dublin teenager was further remanded in custody at Dublin Children’s Court and sent forward for trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on burglary and knife possession charges. The proceedings were reported on 10 September 2015.

The children’s court had refused jurisdiction because of the seriousness of the allegations. Judge John O’Connor told the boy his next hearing at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court would be on 23 October. The teenager cannot be named because he is a juvenile.

An original charge of possessing stolen property — a watch and three rings — had been replaced by burglary and knife possession charges. The allegations concerned a burglary at a 90-year-old woman’s apartment in Dun Laoghaire in the early hours of 6 April 2015.

Garda Peter O’Flynn said the incident happened at 2am, when the woman awoke to find a young man standing over her holding a knife and demanding money and jewellery. He said it would be alleged that the youth took a watch from her bedside locker, demanded her three rings and ransacked her room. The report also said it was alleged that he discarded the knife outside the apartment building.

His solicitor Aenghus McCarthy said the boy, then aged 15, admitted handling the stolen property but denied being the perpetrator of the burglary. The defence sought to keep the case in the juvenile court, while accepting that its seriousness could not be disputed. Mr McCarthy said the teenager’s parents were deceased, that he had not come to garda attention until the previous year and that he had been living in a tent. The court nevertheless refused jurisdiction.

This case may have concluded differently. The outcome has not yet been confirmed by a public source we could find.