This article is from page 11 of the 2007-07-10 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 11 JPG
A 55-YEAR-OLD man has been found guilty of making more than 8,000 nuisance phone calls to the garda emergency line in Ennis, over a five-month period.
Eddie Kirby, of Glenoir, St Senan’s Road, Ennis, was found guilty by a jury on nine charges, at Ennis Circuit Court on Friday. However, the trial judge indicated he was not likely to jail him.
Kirby admitted making the calls between October 2004 and March 2005. However, he argued that he suffered from a paranoid delusional disorder at the time.
The trial was told that on one oc-
casion, Kirby threatened to carry out a public hanging on public property. He was asked who was to be hanged and he said himself. During another phone call he made a reference to “corrupt gardai”.
On another occasion, he told gardai he had a rope around his neck. Each time, a garda car was dispatched but did not get any response.
The majority of the calls were made late at night and during some of the conversations, Kirby was abusive and often appeared drunk. His calls regularly clogged up the emergency line and he was told to stop ringing the 999 or 112 emergency numbers but continued to do so.
“Some nights the whole night was
taken up answering calls to this in- dividual, just ringing and ringing and ringing,’ Sergeant Michael Ha- ran told the trial. A log was set up at Ennis Garda Station where the calls were tracked.
Kirby’s barrister Michael Fitzgib- bon said, “This poor man has an ob- sessive compulsion.”
He said the accused was “not a bad man. He’s a misguided man. It’s not his fault. He suffers from this ill- ness.”
Kirby’s psychiatrist Dr John O’Mahony said that in his opinion the calls had been motivated by his condition. “He has a_ personality structure that’s of a paranoid nature. He feels that figures of authority and
other people conspire against him or do him harm,” he said.
He said another psychiatrist con- cluded that Kirby was “like a ter- rier with a bone. Once he gets it, he won’t let it go.”
Kirby told the court he was “very sorry he had to go to that extreme to try to express” himself through his phone calls to Ennis Garda Station.
He said he was abused by a farmer, when he was aged 11.
He made a complaint to gardai in Limerick, but the DPP directed that no prosecution be taken. He said he was sorry he ever made that com- plaint.
He told the trial he was socialising in Galway in 1997, when he was as-
saulted by aman who put his “fist into my mouth and burst three crowns.”
He made a complaint to gardai about that, but was upset that nobody was held accountable and admitted he was “obsessed” about it.
In his closing speech, Judge Sean O Donnabhain told the jury, “If you believe the defendant was entirely delusional or partially delusional, you have to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
The jury found Kirby guilty on all charges. Judge O Donnabhain ad- journed sentencing until a later date, but said he did not believe a prison term would be appropriate.
‘IT don’t see any merit in imposing a custodial sentence,’ he said.