Criminal Court<\/a> found Ekhosuehi guilty on all counts. He was sentenced on Wednesday to 11 years in jail with the final two years suspended by Judge Sinead Behan.<\/p>\nInvestigating officer Det Gda Eoghain O\u2019Callaghan had previously told the court: \u201cAt 7pm on July 2nd, 2023, two young men at Highfield Avenue, College Road, Cork, had to run to a neighbour\u2019s house to raise the alarm. They said two men had come through the front door by force.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of them was wearing an all-black tracksuit, black ski-mask, blue latex gloves, and had a large chef\u2019s knife with black handle. The second man was also wearing a black tracksuit, black gloves, and had a flathead screwdriver. Both were demanding money,\u201d O\u2019Callaghan said.<\/p>\n
The intruders ransacked the house, demanding to know where cocaine and cash were located, the court was told. <\/p>\n
The students were held at knifepoint and punched in the head. One raider threatened them, saying, \u201cI will start cutting off fingers, on my mother\u2019s life, if I don\u2019t start finding something soon\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took \u20ac30 in cash and took their phones. Both fled by the backdoor. A glove was left behind and was forensically examined and found to have a fingerprint matching Martin Ekhosuehi. He was also nominated as a suspect by two garda\u00ed who examined CCTV,\u201d said the detective.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Callaghan explained that one of the victims was on the phone to his girlfriend in Drogheda when the raid occurred. She became so concerned by background sounds and the sudden ending of the phone call that she alerted garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed arrived a short time later and knocked at the door, announcing their presence by shouting through the letterbox. Ekhosuehi and his accomplice warned the two students that they would be killed if they tried to call out or answer the door.<\/p>\n
When the two intruders later left the premises, the garda\u00ed were called again and they arrived to find the two students visibly shaken and with cuts to their faces. Both students described being punched and repeatedly threatened that they would be killed, and they feared for their safety.<\/p>\n
The court heard that Ekhosuehi had 14 previous convictions, including three for having drugs for his own use, one for drug dealing, one for money laundering, two for possession of knives, and one for production of an article in the course of a dispute.<\/p>\n
Sentencing, the judge said: \u201cThe accused had planned and premeditated this crime and did so in a manner where they (the accused and his unidentified accomplice) dressed to conceal their identity. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey came with a purpose. The hour must have felt like an eternity. I have not had any indication of remorse or empathy with the victims,\u201d said Behan, noting there was limited mitigation other than Ekhosuehi\u2019s youth and the fact he had a supportive family.<\/p>\n
She said the aggravated burglary merited a headline sentence of 12 years, but she would reduce it to 11 years and suspend the final two years in light of Ekhosuehi\u2019s age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 22-year-old man has been jailed for nine years after he subjected two students to an hour-long, terrifying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[46,51250,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-329292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork","tag-criminal-courts","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329292","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=329292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}