Man to spend Christmas in jail days after being given chance by Judge

December 23, 2019

A man who had been told by a Judge he could spend his first Christmas with his family for fifteen years is now to spend it behind bars.

Stephen Darby was given his festive wish earlier this month when he pleaded with a Judge not to send him to jail.

The 45-year-old, who has 72 previous convictions, appeared at Letterkenny District Court charged with a number of serious offences including assaulting Gardai.

Darby was caught acting suspiciously at The Beeches housing estate in Ballybofey on September 29th last.

He was dressed in black and was trying to force his into one of the houses and fled when Gardai arrived but was caught jumping over a fence.

A vicious altercation saw Darby assault a number of Gardai.

At one stage he picked up a block and threatened to hit a Garda with it while he also told another Garda that he would kill him and burn down his house.

After being pepper-sprayed a number of times, he was eventually arrested.

Solicitor Mr Patsy Gallagher, said his client had been in care since he was aged 9 and was subject to horrors that no person should ever have to go through.

He ended up in Dublin and became part of a criminal gang which he then, rightly or wrongly, considered his family unit.

He ended up in prison for long stretches but in recent months he reconnected with his mother.

Darby claimed that on the night in question he had taken medication and also drank lots of vodka and was trying to find his mother’s house.

Judge Paul Kelly sentenced Darby on a number of charges including the assault on Gardai as well as criminal damage to a total of four months but backdated the sentence to when Darby went into custody.

The accused man pleaded with Judge Kelly to suspend the last month of the sentence as he had not spent Christmas with his real family for 15 years.

Judge Kelly asked him whose fault that was and Darby replied that it was his own.

The Judge agreed to suspend all the sentence under the condition that Darby not be convicted of any public order offences for the next 12 months.

However, Darby was one of two men caught allegedly breaking into a house in Ballybofey in the early hours of Thursday morning last.

He appeared at a special sitting of Letterkenny District Court where he was charged with aggravated burglary and was remanded in custody by Judge Paul Kelly to appear by videolink for a bail hearing on December 27th at the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin.

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