A Bray woman has denied assaulting a store manager during an alleged shoplifting incident at a Dealz in Wicklow<\/p>\n
Kelly O\u2019Brien (49), of Richmond Hill, Fassaroe, Bray, appeared at Bray District Court for a hearing.<\/p>\n
She pleaded not guilty to one count of assault of a store manager at Dealz on Florence Road in Bray.<\/p>\n
Garda Megan O\u2019Neil-Cooney of Bray Garda Station told the court that in January 2025, Ms O\u2019Brien entered the shop and proceeded to take various items before trying to leave without paying.<\/p>\n
She alleges that the complainant tried recovering the items before Ms O\u2019Brien punched her and pulled her to the ground by her hair.<\/p>\n
It was noted that no CCTV was present in court due to issues with receiving the footage from Dealz parent company Poundland.<\/p>\n
Gda O\u2019Neil-Cooney stated that she reviewed the footage at the scene.<\/p>\n
During cross-examination by defence barrister Thomas Finnerty, Gda O\u2019Neil-Cooney remarked that she is aware of the accused since moving to Bray Garda Station in 2024 but failed to retrieve CCTV.<\/p>\n
She said that she did fill out the appropriate applications and went through Poundland headquarters in the UK.<\/p>\n
Businesses require a written request from garda\u00ed to release CCTV, ensuring that data is only provided for legitimate law enforcement purposes.<\/p>\n
Judge David Kennedy said that \u201cthe CCTV could exonerate the accused\u201d.<\/p>\n
The complainant told the court that O\u2019Brien was allegedly observed removing two shopping bags from the self-service tills and filling them up with stock before attempting to leave.<\/p>\n
When the defendant tried to leave, the alleged injured party remarked that she told her \u201cyou can\u2019t leave\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ms O\u2019Brien allegedly proceeded to attempt to barge her to the ground before punching her and pulling her to the ground by her hair.<\/p>\n
The complainant remarked that after she got the accused out of the store and closed the door behind her.<\/p>\n
Before she proceeded to hurl alleged threats, including \u201cI know where you live, I\u2019m going to smash up your house\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m gonna burn out your car\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Finnerty clarified that his client was in court on assault charges and denies any involvement in the theft of property.<\/p>\n
He added that the store manager has no PSA licence and asked her \u201cwhat law governs her to apprehend Ms O\u2019Brien\u201d and that the accused believes that the store manager assaulted her.<\/p>\n
Ms O\u2019Brien gave evidence that she has never been before the courts for threatening anyone and denied slapping her and \u201cpulling her hair\u201d.<\/p>\n
She remarked that \u201cit\u2019s because of who I am and that they know Kelly O\u2019Brien is in the shop\u201d.<\/p>\n
The court was told that Ms O\u2019Brien told her legal counsel that the complainant \u201crugby tackled her to the floor\u201d and \u201ccracked\u201d her phone.<\/p>\n
The accused stated she never reported the incident as she didn\u2019t want to waste garda resources over a \u201cstupid smashed phone\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judge Kennedy remarked that with the absence of CCTV footage he must dismiss the State\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t understand why Poundland won\u2019t just hand over the footage,\u201d said Judge Kennedy.<\/p>\n
Funded by the Court Reporting Scheme<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Bray woman has denied assaulting a store manager during an alleged shoplifting incident at a Dealz in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,13228,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-389331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-darragh-mccann","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389331","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=389331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}