A MAN who broke the terms of his prison release by biting one garda and kicking another has been locked up again for three years.
Edmond Stapleton, 51, a native of Kilbarry Cottages, Dublin Hill in Cork but now with an address at Garranlease, Kilfinane, Co Limerick was back at Cork Circuit Criminal Court today.
Stapleton was sentenced in 2012 to 12 years in jail with five years suspended when he was convicted of 12 offences, including threatening to kill Garda Michael Bohane and careering around Cork Airport in a stolen airport police vehicle.
At the time of sentencing, Judge Sean O Donnabhain made it a condition of suspending the final five years of Stapleton’s sentence that he would behave himself for that period after release from prison.
He also had to remain under the direction of the Probation Service, stay alcohol and drug free and be of good behaviour for that time.
This week, the DPP applied under Section 99 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006 to have the matter re-entered after it emerged that Stapleton had attacked two gardai in Limerick in breach of his undertaking to be of good behaviour after the airport rampage.
Detective Sergeant Chris Cahill said Armed Support Unit members from Cork went to Stapleton’s home in Kilfinane on June 16, 2023 to carry out a search as part of an probe into a shooting in the Wilton area of Cork city on May 12, 2023.
Gardai knocked on the door and identified themselves but got no reply, so they made their way into the property where they found Stapleton upstairs, intent on causing himself self-harm by trying to jump out a window.
Gardai went to restrain him but he kicked out and one officer was knocked back suffering an injury to his elbow.
Stapleton also bit another officer on the arm as the garda and his colleagues were trying to bring him downstairs.
Because of that incident, Stapleton was charged with two counts of assault causing harm and on November 6 last at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court, he was sentenced to three years in jail for the biting incident and 12 months in jail concurrent for the other assault.
Cork City State Solicitor Frank Nyhan said today that the State was seeking to have the matter re-entered on foot of Stapleton’s recent convictions.
Detective Sergeant Cahill said on the afternoon of May 22, 2011, Stapleton jumped into a Garda SUV on Patrick Street in Cork city centre and put a knife to the throat of Garda Michael Bohane and threatened to kill him before ordering him from the vehicle.
NEAR MISS
He then drove at speed onto the South Link Road and to Cork Airport, where he crashed through perimeter fencing and hijacked a Cork Airport Fire Service jeep and began careering around the apron, where he rammed an unmarked garda car.
He missed one airplane loaded with fuel and full of holidaymakers by inches when he pulled up short near the aircraft and, wearing only his boxers, jumped from the jeep armed with two knives and eventually had to be tasered to enable Gardai to arrest him.
Defence barrister Elaine Audley said her client had expressed remorse for his actions, was living in extremely poor conditions at his house in Kilfinane, and had poor mental health.
Judge Dermot Sheehan said the assault of the two gardai was in clear breach of the terms of his suspended sentence from Cork Circuit Criminal Court and he re-activated the full five years that were suspended by Judge O Donnabhain in 2012.
He said he would make it consecutive to the three-year term for the assaults of the gardai imposed in Limerick on November 6, but he suspended the final two years of the five year term, meaning that Stapleton will now serve a total of six years in jail.
