A man who rampaged around Moate Golf Club in a stolen buggy, who was stopped twice in two months for drink driving and managed to steal the relevant pages from the arresting garda's notebook, had an 11 month jail sentence adjourned until October to see if he would be suitable for a community service order.
Karl Dawson (20 ), with an address in Moyvoughley, Moate was in court this week (May 20 ) to plead guilty to the above charges, as well as to a number of public order and drug possession offences.
Dawson, along with a co-accused, had pleaded guilty in February to the damage at the golf club during the early hours of April 26, 2008 when they went drunkenly joyriding across a number of greens, but had sentencing put back to this week to allow the pair come up with €3,900 in compensation between them. This was accepted as paid in court on Wednesday.
The court also heard how Dawson was stopped whilst driving under the influence at 3.30am on February 1 and at 3.52am on March 29. Coincidentally, both readings were 65 microgrammes per 100 millilitres of breath.
After Dawson was processed at the Garda station on February 1 and released, Garda Fahy noticed his notebook was missing from the interview room and when he arrested the defendant a few minutes later in the centre of Athlone, he found him in possession of the notebook with two pages relevant to the recent interview torn out.
On this occasion, Dawson was also found in possession of a small amount of cannabis resin, valued at €25.
Between these dates, he was also arrested at 1am on March 15 outside Supermacs in Moate for “shouting and roaring” and refusing to go home.
“There is one common denominator here and that's alcohol,” said his solicitor, Mr Padraig Quinn as he handed in a number of letters to the court.
Judge John Neilan referred to some points raised in the submitted letters concerning some difficulties the defendant had during his school years.
“Why weren't State services engaged during these difficulties?” he asked.
“Where was the parochial house when the issues highlighted in the parochial letter occurred?
“He's not the slowest person. I don't know how many notebooks are taken but it looks like one of the smartest moves I've seen.”
He added he didn't believe alcohol was the only intoxicant used by the defendant and ruled the conviction for possession of cannabis be endorsed on his licence “so gardai in the future can see he was driving under the influence”.
He also banned him from driving for six years and fined Dawson a total of €850.
He also handed down three concurrent 11 month sentences but postponed activating them until October 21 “depending on results I expect to see from agencies engaged”.
“It comes down to one issue, young man – are you motivated to do something with your life other than downing big, frothy pints of porter and lobbing in big lumps of cannabis?”
