Jailed over high-speed car chase
A MAN with 190 previous convictions who drove dangerously during a highspeed chase with gardaí has been jailed for two-and-a-half years.
Dean Joyce, 24, was convicted in February after a second trial. The jury in his first trial was discharged after a juror fell asleep 15 minutes into the trial.
At Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Garda Sergeant Ronan McDermott told Garret Baker BL, prosecuting, that he was in an unmarked patrol car when he spotted a car driven by Joyce breaking a red light.
Garda McDermott said gardaí activated the sirens but Joyce failed to stop and a highspeed pursuit began. During this chase Joyce drove the car through red lights, on the wrong side of the road and in the wrong direction around a roundabout.
Joyce’s car collided with a Garda van at Blackditch Road, Ballyfermot, causing €1,500 of damage. The car then mounted a footpath and stopped in a nearby housing estate.
Joyce ran off but was arrested. In his car, gardaí found a boxcutter knife, gloves and stolen property including laptops, an iPad, a flat-screen TV and keys to another car.
Garda McDermott testified that Joyce’s previous convictions included theft, criminal damage, robbery and using or possessing a mobile phone in prison.
Pieter LeVert BL, defending, said his client began abusing drugs and driving stolen cars at an early age. His parents died when he was a teen and his grandparents raised him after that, the court heard. Joyce was recently jailed for other offences and his time in prison had been ‘the making of him’, counsel said.
Joyce, of Rowlagh Park, Clondalkin, Dublin, had denied 11 charges, including endangering gardaí by driving his car into a Garda van, four counts of dangerous driving and possession of stolen property in Ballyfermot and Clondalkin on March 3, 2015. He had also denied driving without a licence, driving without insurance, possession of a boxcutter that was used in a burglary, criminal damage of a Garda van and failing to stop for gardaí.
During the trial, Judge Karen O’Connor directed Joyce be found not guilty of endangerment. The jury later convicted him of all other counts. Judge O’Connor yesterday imposed a total of three years of imprisonment, with six months suspended. She also disqualified Joyce from driving for ten years.