A woman in her late fifties who allegedly made off in a bread van and tore the side off it when she collided with a guardrail of the Ballinasloe AIB appealed to a judge at the local court to give her a chance.
However, Gardaí objected to her bail on the grounds that she couldn’t provide an address, and although she had no previous convictions, she appeared before Judge James Faughnan on nine separate charges, which were committed while on bail.
Catherine O’Brien said she took the van because she wanted to keep warm, and insisted she hadn’t eaten any of the bread. She told Gardaí she was from Castleblakeney, but an address could not be verified.
Garda Damien Hogan told Judge Faughnan that O’Brien had taken the Brennan’s Bread van at 7.40am the morning before, and after colliding with the bank and taking the side off the vehicle, Gardaí brought her to a stop at Deerpark, Ballinasloe, and she had been kept in custody overnight to appear before the court on May 7.
Before taking the van, she entered Eurospar at 7.25am through a back door and concealed two bottles of wine on her person. When challenged, she handed one bottle back to the staff but kept the other.
O’Brien pleaded that she had never been in trouble before until her mother died three months ago. She said she was sorry, and if given bail, she would reside in a hostel in Galway.
However, Gardaí said this was not acceptable, and she had accumulated so many charges in the past few months that they were at a loss to know what to do with her.
Judge Faughnan told her there were too many charges and he was going to remand her in custody for a few days as she needed to see where she could end up if she continued as she was. He added that while she was with Dóchas she might be assessed for treatment of her alcohol issues.
Warning her that she needed an address and €500 before she could get bail at Wednesday’s sitting of Loughrea District Court, he told her: “you can’t be going around taking vans.”
