Compulsive 999 caller given suspended sentence
A woman who made false claims to gardaí of murder, shooting, stabbing, house fires and of being with an abandoned baby has been given a two-and-a-half-year suspended sentence.
Ann Lynch (aged 38) with a current address at Fortlawn Avenue, and who formerly lived in a caravan at Whitestown Avenue, Blanchardstown had a history of ringing the 999 emergency number.
Judge Yvonne Murphy had adjourned the case at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for a year last July to allow Lynch to continue treatment for her compulsive behaviour.
She said today that an updated probation report was very positive and showed that Lynch had made considerable progress and had cooperated fully with the service.
She sentenced Lynch to three concurrent terms consisting of 18 month, two year and two-and-a-half-year sentences, but suspended them all on condition that she continue to attend at the probation service for 12 months and keep the peace for three years.
Judge Murphy praised the gardaí in the efforts they made in trying to prevent this case coming to court in the first instance and noted that they had treated Lynch with great sensitivity but she said when the offences continued they were left with no option but to prosecute.
Sergeant Michael Drew told Judge Murphy last July, that Lynch made 99 silent calls "with heavy breathing" on one night alone.
Lynch pleaded guilty to a series of charges of making a false statement causing apprehension that persons and property might be damaged; false reports causing inconvenience; and to wastage of garda resources, on various dates between February 2002 and October 2003.
Mr Desmond Zaidan BL, prosecuting, said at an earlier hearing that Lynch rang Santry garda station in the early hours of July 17, 2002, to report a murder that never occurred and made the 99 silent phone calls the same day. She made five more silent phone calls to the same station the following morning.
Detective Garda Kevin Walsh told Mr Anthony Hunt BL that Lynch was not the woman who originally made the widely reported false claim on October 27, 2003 that she had abandoned a baby in Ballymun but came onto the scene a day later.
Det garda Walsh said Lynch rang Ballymun garda station seven times on the evening of October 28, 2003 when the investigation into the case of the alleged abandoned baby was in full-swing.
She claimed she was ringing from one of the Ballymun tower-blocks and while crying and sounding very upset on the phone she also told gardaí that "the child is not breathing".
When the calls were later traced to her she denied she had been trying to gain media attention but agreed she was lonely and depressed and that her behaviour might have been "a call for help".
Sgt Drew said the first recorded phone call by Lynch to 999 was on February 24, 2002 when she claimed there had been a shooting at an address in Raheny.
She placed her second such call on June 14, 2002 when she said there had been a stabbing at another house on the same street in Raheny where she claimed the shooting had occurred. She rang the fire brigade on July 15, 2002 falsely reporting that a caravan was on fire at a Raheny address.
Sgt Drew said that on August 11, 2002 she rang the Dublin Fire Brigade again to report an alleged house fire in the same area in Raheny. Gardaí and firemen were dispatched to all the locations she specified, causing waste of manpower and incurring unnecessary expenses.
Sgt Drew agreed with Ms Biggs that Lynch made no attempt to disguise her voice during the calls and that she sounded intoxicated.
Ms Biggs said Lynch had "a low level of intellectual functioning" and her life had been "falling apart" when she made the phone calls. Both her parents were dead and she had been experiencing problems with claiming a substantial inheritance her mother had left her.
