“He needs to be brought to his senses and removed from his influences,” Judge Seamus Hughes said as he jailed a Mullingar man for four months for threatening behaviour.
Piotr Ludwin, with an address at Ashfield, Mullingar had walked out of court on April 7, where he had been treated leniently, and on the same day stole chicken from Tesco, said the judge.
After hearing evidence, the judge said Ludwin had abused the staff, who are usually young schoolgirls, and then went on to abuse the gardai, using what he described as ‘a litany of profanitites”.
Solicitor Louis Kiernan said the offence happened when he had gone home after court on April 7 and because there was no food in his father’s home, he had taken the chicken from Tesco, worth €5.
In May of last year he was observed by community garda Scott Kahler among a group of men drinking cider. He was yelling profanities at another male and exposed his buttocks to gardai.
Ludwin then refused to give his name and resisted arrest. He spat at the garda and then head-butted him, Inspector Jarlath Folan explained.
The court heard that on March 3 last year when gardai were called to a robbery in Blackhall Place, they found a victim who had been attacked in a laneway.
He identified another man who implicated Ludwin as the person who had hit him in the head and kneed him in the body. That was the case being dealt with on the day the defendant later stole from Tesco.
He had been given a six month probation bond on the basis that a probation report said he was at low risk of offending.
“That wasn’t correct,” observed the judge on hearing that the gardai were re-entering that case on the basis of his further offences.
When the judge questioned their condition in court, Ludwin’s friend who was interpreting for him, said they had both been drinking the night before but not that day.
Mr Kiernan said his client, a former carpenter, relies on his father as he receives no social welfare payment.
The common thread in all his offending is alcohol, he said as the judge jailed Ludwin for four months for threatening behaviour at Tesco and two months concurrent for assault.
