Teenager punched victim in face after phone demand
A teenage drug addict, who launched an unprovoked attack on a young boy while they were travelling on a Dublin Bus, has been remanded on continuing bail pending sentence.
The 17-year-old boy had pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to the boy and making demands with menaces from him, which occurred on the number 83 Dublin Bus from the city-centre to Finglas, on August 4 last year.
The victim, who is his mid-teens, had been on the top deck of the bus sitting beside a friend. The youth sat behind him and started flicking paper at them.
Garda Patricia Doyle of Finglas station had said he "asked the injured party to give him his phone. The boy said he did not have one and got up from his seat. The accused punched him several times then got off the bus," she said.
The victim was left with bad bruising on his face but made a full recovery.
The defendant who had one previous conviction for travelling in a stolen car also pleaded guilty to criminally damaging a bus in Finglas, Dublin, on July 21 last year. He ripped out seats from a moving double deck bus and then threw them out onto on-coming traffic
“By ripping out seven seats and then firing them out the window he put people’s lives at risk. If a child was passing by he could have been seriously injured or killed,” a judge had said earlier.
The teenager also admitted engaging in abusive behaviour contrary to the Public Order Act, and threatening to cause criminal damage to a garda’s car by torching it, on Church Street, Dublin 7.
Judge Bryan Smyth was told that the teenager was trying to get a place in a residential drug addiction treatment programme. The court adjourned sentencing until September.
The court had heard that at the time of the offence the teen had been a chronic drug addict and "was taking about 40 valium tablets a day".
He was reared by his father; his mother who had addiction problems left when he was an infant.
