15-year-old girl remanded for ransacking OAP's bebroom
A 15-year-old girl, who ransacked an elderly man’s bedroom after he had allowed her into his home to use the toilet, has been remanded on bail pending sentence.
The girl, who is originally from Romania but now living in Co. Meath, had denied entering the man’s home, in Balally Park, in Dundrum in Dublin, with intent to commit a theft, on July 27 last.
The man, who is in his late 60s, told Judge Bryan Smyth that he had been in his front garden when the girl and two others approached his house.
“One asked me could she use my toilet. I said certainly. I brought her into the hallway and told her the toilet was at the top of the stairs.”
However a while later he noticed she was taking “quite an amount of time”, meanwhile the girl’s friends tried to distract him and told him she would be back in a moment.
“I got suspicious and went upstairs she was not in the toilet, she was in my bedroom. The drawers were all opened and I ordered her out,” he said.
In evidence, the girl denied his allegation and claimed that she and her friends had got off at the wrong bus stop while travelling to the Dundrum Shopping Centre. She needed to use a toilet and the man had allowed her into his home.
She said all the doors upstairs were closed. She opened one which turned out to be a bedroom door but she closed it immediately, at which point the man came and told her to get out.
In cross examination, she denied when it was put to her that the door to the toilet at the top of the stairs was open at the time.
Judge Smyth found her guilty. “I have no doubt what she was about on the day in question,” he said, “trying to take advantage” of a man “senior in years”.
He was told that she had been before the court last year for a theft offence for which she had been given the benefit of the Probation Act.
In mitigation, defence solicitor Ms Kelly Breen said the girl has been living in Ireland with her family for a number of years and has managed to secure home education to assist her with language skills.
Judge Smyth adjourned sentencing until November 20 next and remanded the girl, who was accompanied to her hearing by her mother, on continuing bail for a probation report to be obtained.
