Man's sentence increased for attack on Lithuanian man
A Dublin man who repeatedly kicked the head of a Lithuanian man in "an unprovoked, absolutely vicious" attack which left him in a vegetative state had his sentence increased from seven to twelve years imprisonment by the Court of Criminal Appeal today.
Mr Justice Nial Fennelly said that the attack by Kevin Dunne was "an unprovoked, absolutely vicious, unrestrained piece of sadistic violence".
Kevin Dunne (aged 19), of Ballyfermot Drive, Dublin pleaded guilty last October to causing serious harm to Mr Vytautas Sukys (aged 48) at Royal Canal Bank, Phibsboro on September 25, 2004 and was sentenced to seven years imprisonment. The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed against the leniency of the sentence.
Mr Sukys, a trained pilot came to live and work in Ireland in 2003 and had hoped to raise enough money as a landscape gardener to allow his family to work here.
He was left severely brain damaged after the brutal attack and cannot walk or speak unaided and his face has had to be reconstructed.
He now lives in a nursing home in Swords where his wife Neringa and medical staff care for him.
The public has donated more than €100,000 to a fund set up by the gardaí following the attack.
Mr Justice Fennelly, presiding at the three-judge court, said that Mr Sukys was a Lithuanian working here with a family that he was working to support and a son who wished to go to college.
All that has been extensively and utterly destroyed and Mr Sukys is now in a vegetative state and has to be looked after full time by his wife who is now living in Ireland.
The judge said it was absolutely inexplicable how somebody could commit such violence on another person. He said that Dunne had repeatedly kicked Mr Sukys in the head.
He said that the court was satisifed that the judge had committed error and had been unduly lenient in the sentence of seven years.
The court increased the sentence to ten years and ordered it to run consecutive to another two years sentence which was imposed at the same time as the orginal sentence for an assault by Dunne on a French national.
