A man has been sentenced to 16 months in prison for robbing an 81-year-old American tourist in Killarney.<\/p>\n
Tomas Starodubcevas<\/a>, who is in his 20s, formerly of Tudor Lodge, Woodlawn Road, Killarney, was sentenced at Tralee Circuit Court this week on one count of robbery<\/a>.<\/p>\n The woman broke her arm when she fell during the tussle from which the man robbed her handbag, and the court heard her recovery has been long and painful.<\/p>\n The victim in this case, Andrea Bartlett, was on holidays in Ireland with her 83-year-old husband for their 54th wedding anniversary, and were tracing their ancestral roots.<\/p>\n At about 7:40pm on 22nd April 2024, as Ms Bartlett and her husband walked back from dinner, Mr Starodubcevas grabbed her handbag off her shoulder, robbing it and its contents.<\/p>\n In the tussle, he caused her to fall and break her arm and Mr Starodubcevas ran off with the bag.<\/p>\n Ms Bartlett previously gave a victim impact statement in court, in which she described her recovery as long and painful, and it took three months before she could sleep lying down due to her injuries.<\/p>\n She said her husband provided amazing care, but she depended on him totally in her recovery.<\/p>\n Her balance was terrible following the attack and she walked with a cane for about three months.<\/p>\n She acknowledged the support she received from the people of Killarney who assisted her after she was attacked.<\/p>\n Ms Bartlett said the financial impact from this attack and her injuries was around $12,000.<\/p>\n Defending Mr Starodubcevas, barrister Katie O\u2019Connell said he was 23 at the time, from Lithuania and worked in hospitality and as a labourer.<\/p>\n She said he was in fear for his life at the time over drug debt, and didn\u2019t mean to hurt Ms Bartlett when robbing her; she said he made a stupid decision under the influence of drugs, but he is profoundly sorry.<\/p>\n Ms O\u2019Connell said he acknowledges this had catastrophic consequences for the victim but it is totally out of character.<\/p>\n Judge Ronan Munro said he planned to pick on someone extremely vulnerable, who broke her arm.<\/p>\n In mitigation, Judge Munro said he pleaded guilty early, had no relevant previous convictions, and prison would be difficult for him.<\/p>\n He set a headline sentence of four years, reduced this to three years, and suspended the final 20 months on condition he engages with the probation services.<\/p>\n Having already served six months, he now has another ten months to serve.<\/p>\n Judge Munro told Mr Starodubcevas, \u201cWhen you\u2019re on drugs, you\u2019re a very dangerous man\u201d, and he said Ms Bartlett made the world a safer place by making a complaint as he needed to be taken off the streets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been sentenced to 16 months in prison for robbing an 81-year-old American tourist in Killarney.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,95847,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-174564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-robbing","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}