Court hears row over football team prompted threatening and abusive phone calls
A man who received 115 antagonising phonecalls in just one day has appeared in court charged with threatening and abusing the man who called him.
Sean Gallagher made the calls to Joe Craig, a man whom he had fallen out with following a row over a local football team.
When Craig reacted and went into a rage after Gallagher's constant calls, Gallagher recorded the calls and accused Craig of threatening him and using racial language.
Gallagher made the complaints to Gardaí who charged Craig with making calls of a threatening, insulting and racial nature.
Father-of-one Craig, 39, of Ard O'Donnell, Letterkenny, appeared at Letterkenny District Court in Co Donegal.
Detective Garda Darren Carter said that on October 7 last year, Gallagher called Craig 115 times on the same day.
However, he also revealed that Gallagher had made calls to Craig on many other dates adding that the commuication was "very much one-way traffic".
He handed in typed transcripts from two of the telephone calls to Judge Paul Kelly who read them in detail.
Detective Carter said that Craig admits that he flipped out and that his comments were borne out of frustration.
Although the specific detail of the comments was not revealed, Garda Carter said that Mr Gallagher's wife is an African woman and said some of the comments were racial towards her.
Judge Kelly said he could understand why Craig may have reacted to Gallagher but he should not have directed any comments towards Mr Gallagher's wife.
"I'm not going to repeat them (the comments) but they are off the scale," he said.
"They seem to relate to someone else and not just the complainant. They appear to be about the complainant's wife.
Whatever grievance he had with the complainant - talking about wife is completely unacceptable.
Detective Carter said he had ordered both men not to contact each other having served them both with anti-social behaviour orders and it appeared they had listened to him.
He added that he accepted that Mr Craig's buttons "had been pressed" and he knows he should not have reacted.
The accused man's solicitor, Mr Kieran Dillon, said there was a lot of provocation on behalf of Mr Gallagher in that he made 115 calls to his client in just one day.
"There was massive provocation and my client is human. This wasn't just a once-off, there were multiple calls and my client was able to restrain himself but on this occasion he could not," said Mr Dillon.
Judge Kelly said he was ordering Craig to keep the peace.
"In view of the background outlined comprehensively by Garda Carter and in no small part in Garda Carter's view that it is at an end I will deal with a peace bond," he said.
