A man who had been spending €600 a week on drugs has been jailed for a further two years for headbutting a cemetery flower seller.
Alan Melia (31), of Cherry Orchard Avenue, Ballyfermot, Dublin, admitted assault causing harm on December 15th, 2020.
Melia, who was on bail at the time of the offence, has 113 previous convictions and is serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence for a robbery in 2020, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard.
Det Gda Jack Walsh told the court how the injured party was selling flowers at Palmerstown Cemetery, Dublin, as he had done for 40 years without incident, when two men approached him.
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He told Emer Delargy, prosecuting, how Melia’s accomplice asked the seller for a number of bunches of flowers for €6 and said he would rob him if he did not give them to him. The court heard the accomplice was unidentified.
Melia headbutted the flower seller as he turned to leave and the force caused his glasses to break. The man also sustained a cut on his nose.
Melia’s accomplice said “you shouldn’t have wound him up”. The flower seller’s nose was not broken, but he required stitches at St James’s Hospital, Dublin.
Judge Orla Crowe set a headline sentence of three years and suspended the final year of it on strict conditions. She ordered the two-year sentence to run consecutive to the sentence Melia is serving.
“This was a horrible assault on a man who for 40 years had a flower stand outside a cemetery,” she said. “That is a really important and sensitive role that this man was doing in society.”
The judge said Melia and his accomplice “set upon him” and went through his pockets and headbutted him after he had turned away.
Having read the victim impact statement, she said the assault had a “profound impact” and she had seen the photograph of the bloodstained glasses and his stitches.
The judge said the most serious part was the psychological impact it had, saying there was “only one victim here and that is the injured party”.
She said she had read a psychological report which outlined Melia had a happy home life, but spent most of his adulthood in prison.
The judge noted Melia’s remorse and said she would like to put some structure into his life into the future. She said she had to take account of the profound effect on the victim.
She noted Melia was on bail for two incidents at the time of the offence. The injured man also had to spend €900 on new glasses, she said.
Judge Crowe said the injured man was “utterly blameless, selling flowers” and that the threshold for a custodial sentence had been reached.
The sentence for the robbery will expire in May next year and any other sentence would have to be consecutive, she said.
“This has to be marked with a consecutive custodial sentence,” the judge said, also saying “he is a danger to society” if he does not get some sort of help while in custody. She ordered Melia to remain under the supervision of the Probation Services for two years post-release.
Keith Spencer, defending, said Melia had entered a plea on his trial date. Melia has one child and his partner was present in court to support him.
Drug use was the reason for Melia’s offending, Mr Spencer said. He said Melia had started to hang around with the wrong crowd and had been spending €600 a week on heroin and medications.
He said Melia offered an apology to the injured man and “he is attuned to the impact it has had”.
