Meath man who tried to ‘scare’ teen with a baseball bat wins appeal against severity of nine-month sentences

By Francis Carroll, The Drogheda Independent

A 28-year-old man has avoided prison after successfully appealing against the severity of sentences he received following an incident when he arrived with a baseball bat at the house of a teenager who had been posting messages about him on social media.

Conor Farrelly, De Valera Park, Drumconrath, and Muff Crescent, Nobber, Co. Meath, had been sentenced in the district court to concurrent nine-month jail terms for trespassing and producing a baseball bat at Tullykeel, Ardee, on September 23, 2023.

At the finalisation of the appeal, he got community service in lieu of one of the sentences, while the other was suspended.

Dundalk Circuit Court previously heard that no one was in the house at the time.

The appellant arrived in a blue-coloured car. He climbed over a gate with a bat in his hand.

He began shouting and swinging the bat and attempted to strike two dogs in the garden. The animals were unharmed.

Mr Farrelly approached the front door and then went around the back of the house before climbing over the gate and leaving.

He was subsequently located by gardaí.

In a statement, he said that he and a teenage boy had a falling out after the younger person called him a heroin addict and a junkie.

He called to the house. He got the baseball bat to scare him. “I had a bad day”.

Sgt Paddy Skehan said that the teenager had been “winding him up” on Snapchat. There had been no further interaction between them.

There were 19 previous convictions, including eighteen for Road Traffic offences which occurred within the space of a year. The other was for an affray in 2016 for which an 18-month suspended sentence was imposed in 2023.

Solicitor Catherine Taaffe said that her client struggled with a predominantly heroin addiction.

e had been on remission for eight months but relapsed. He was struggling and needed intervention. He was due to undergo a methadone programme.

After adjourning the appeal for reports, Judge Dara Hayes said that Mr Farrelly had engaged well with the Probation Service in the meantime.

On the trespass charge, 150 hours community service to be completed within 12 months was imposed in lieu of the nine-month sentence.

The other nine-month sentence for producing a baseball bat was suspended for 12 months.