A MAN was jailed for 10 months at Galway District Court yesterday after threatening an elderly couple living next door to him who made a complaint to gardaí about noise from a late-night party.
Donal Burke (41), a native of Kilrush in Co Clare, with an address at Gleann Rua, Lurgan Park, Renmore, Galway, pleaded guilty to trespassing at the elderly couple’s home at Clareview Park, Ballybane, Galway, in a manner which was likely to put them in fear, in the early hours of January 22nd last.
Insp Mick Coppinger said Burke was living beside the couple at Clareview Park at the time.
He became aggressive when he realised his neighbours had rang gardaí because of the noise coming from his party at 11.40pm. He tried to force his way into the couple’s home, where he told Garda Karen Lynagh, who was speaking to them on the phone at the time, that he would “do 20 years” for the people who called the Garda and would “sort them out”.
In a separate incident on May 6th last, Burke stuck his head in the window of a parked patrol car and called gardaí a number of obscene and abusive names.
He then spat at a female garda who went to arrest him. On May 14th last he was arrested for being abusive and aggressive to door staff at a city nightclub.
Judge Mary Fahy sentenced Burke to four months in prison for trespassing and imposed a further four-month consecutive sentence for spitting at the garda. A further two-month sentence was imposed for the nightclub incident.