Ten gardaí were needed to restrain a man who has been jailed for four years after he walked along the M50 before hijacking a car at Dublin airport .
Petrica Lucaci (26) had a minor crash near the toll bridge on the M50 before he abandoned his car and walked for several hours to the airport.
He then knocked down a taxi-driver after driving onto a pedestrian median while trying to escape in a BMW he had just hijacked.
Lucaci had minutes earlier tried to take a car from another man whose five and 12-year old children were sitting in the back seat.
During the subsequent chase with airport police and gardaí , Lucaci broke two sets of red lights and drove against traffic along the dual carriageway on the Naul Road. He then drove the wrong way around the Ballymun Road roundabout, narrowly missing an articulated truck.
He crashed while trying to perform a U-turn to get back onto the dual carriageway and narrowly missed a Dublin Bus.
The court heard Lucaci was arrested after he came at 10 gardaí with "fists spinning". He struck three gardaí during the struggle, with one garda being left with a cut behind his ear. He later assaulted two security officers while being treated in Beaumont Hospital.
Lucaci, a Romanian national with an address at Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to unlawful seizure of a vehicle, attempted unlawful seizure of a vehicle, assaulting Kevin O'Brien causing him harm, assault of Garda Adrian McHugh, assaulting two security officers at Beaumont Hospital, two charges of endangerment and dangerous driving on October 7th, 2014.
He has no previous convictions in Ireland or Romania and had €2,000 in court as a token of his remorse.
Lucaci told gardaí in interview that he wanted to take a car to see what it felt like to be rich.
“I am a good guy, you can ask people,” Lucaci told gardaí. “Of course I knew it was wrong, you would be crazy not to know it was wrong.”
Judge Terrence O’Sullivan sentenced Lucaci to five years with the final year suspended. He banned him from driving for six years and ordered that he undergo anger management, under the supervision of the Probation Service, when released from prison.
The judge said Lucaci had carried out his acts of destructions for no apparent reason. “He had not taken any intoxicant nor was there any triggering row,” he said before he said Lucaci was in a state of “hyper-aggression” and it took 10 gardaí and pepper spray to “quell him”.