A COURT has heard that a teenager was thrown into the boot of a car and then held captive until his relatives paid for damage to a car.
A young man who was involved in kidnapping the 16-year-old youth and holding him has been jailed at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for seven years.
Darren Boylan (21), St Mark’s Grove, Clondalkin, Dublin, yesterday pleaded guilty in court to falsely imprisoning the teenager on July 27th, 2010, at Portrane Road, Donabate.
He also pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to him at Beaverstown Road, Donabate, and to making a demand for €4,000 from his sister on the same date.
Garda Aidan McGuire told Michael Bowman, prosecuting, that the victim and his friends were returning home from a house party when a car, driven by Boylan, pulled up alongside them at Beaverstown Road in Donabate.
An argument broke out before one of the men got out and threw an empty beer bottle at the teen.
Boylan drove the car away and crashed into a wall, damaging the rear of the car, before driving back to where the victim and his friends were.
The teenager’s friends ran away and Boylan drove the car at him, causing him to fall on to a gate.
Three men got out and started hitting the teenager with a wheel brace. They grabbed him and put him into the boot of the car.
Boylan drove for 45 minutes to the M50 where the gang took the youth out of the boot and tied his legs together before pushing him into a ditch.
They told him they wanted money for the damage caused to Boylan’s car.
The men made the youth phone his sister to get her to bring €4,000 to them. They threatened her that if she did not bring the money, her brother would be killed.
The girl informed her mother and her uncle who then called gardaí. Shortly afterwards the men untied the victim and ran away, leaving him alone on the motorway, where he contacted gardaí from an emergency phone.
He was brought to Beaumont Hospital and treated for facial and head injuries. He received nine stitches to two cuts to his head.
Boylan, who has 18 previous convictions, was arrested at his home in Clondalkin a short time later.
He admitted to gardaí that it was a “spur-of-the-moment” incident which had begun with a drunken exchange of words between the two groups and had “then got out of hand”.
Garda McGuire agreed with Dean Kelly, defending, that Boylan was not the main culprit in the incident.
Before he passed sentence, Judge Martin Nolan yesterday accepted that Boylan was not a leader but he noted that he actively took part in the incident by driving the car.