This article is from page 17 of the 2009-05-05 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 17 JPG
A MAN who took a car without the owner’s consent and then crashed it has been handed a jail sentence and put off the road for five years.
Garda Niall Cosgrove told Ennis District Court that he received a call about a road accident on August 9 last, where one car had crashed into the back of another. He said the ac- cused, Barry O’Sullivan, c/o Cluain Mhuire, Athenry, Galway, told him
he had permission to drive the car. However, when Gda Cosgrove con- tacted the owner, she told him this was not the case.
Defending solicitor Jenny Fitzgib- bon said that the accused was staying in the same house as the owner of the car that night. “It wasn’t a case that Mr Sullivan randomly met a stranger and took their keys,” she said.
The owner of the car told the court that she had met the accused that weekend, through a mutual friend.
They were at a house in Ennis and he asked her for a cigarette. “I told him they were in my handbag and to take them from my handbag,” she said. She later heard he was arrested, having crashed her car.
“T wouldn’t let my friends drive my car, let alone a fella I had just met the night before,’ she told the court.
A six-month jail term was imposed, along with a five-year disqualifica- tion. A bond was fixed in the event of an appeal.