Machete-wielding attacker loses appeal

A MACHETE-wielding man who took part in an ‘animalistic’ attack on a family home that left two adults and their two children ‘terrorised’ has lost an appeal against his convictions.

Anthony McNamara, 28, was convicted by a Circuit Court jury last year of violent disorder and criminal damage at Ardmore Park in Tallaght, Dublin, on October 9, 2018. He was also convicted of ‘production of an article capable of inflicting serious injury’ after his trial heard that he wielded a machete during the incident.

Judge Pauline Codd, who presided over the trial and sentenced McNamara to five years and six months in prison, said a gang of men, most of them with their faces covered with balaclavas and hoods, came to the house at around midnight and ‘terrorised’ the occupants.

McNamara, of Árd Mor Drive, Tallaght, was armed with a machete and at one point he picked up a child’s scooter from the front garden and threw it at the female resident.

McNamara’s barrister, Keith Spencer BL, argued to the Court of Appeal that the trial judge should have dismissed the jury after one of the residents of the house said that she heard another house nearby being ‘smashed to the ground’ shortly before the attack on her own house.

Mr Spencer said this suggested that his client had been engaged in similar, previous criminal conduct and was therefore inadmissible and prejudicial.

Dismissing the appeal, Judge Isobel Kennedy said the evidence given by the witness ‘was not referable’ to McNamara and therefore did not give rise to prejudice.

Judge Kennedy was sitting with Court of Appeal president Judge George Birmingham and Judge Patrick McCarthy.

In a victim impact statement, the woman described the attack as ‘animalistic’ and said that ‘all I did was stop an argument’. She said that as a result of her injuries she couldn’t open her mouth for eight months.

‘I have no hate for Anthony, I know he is a product of his environment,’ she said.

McNamara’s 18 previous convictions include drug-dealing, burglary and throwing of missiles.

Judge Codd said that this was a sinister attack with a significant degree of violence involving the use of a machete and improvised weapons.