An American tourist has avoided a conviction after causing over \u20ac45,000 worth of criminal damage in one day in Kenmare.<\/p>\n
Judge David Waters gave 59-year-old Rodney Menolascina of SW McKinley Street, Gresham, Oregon, USA, the benefit of the Probation Act after he pleaded guilty to four charges.<\/p>\n
The court heard Mr Menolascina was not intoxicated, nor was there any sign of a medical incident, when he caused the damage in several premises in Kenmare.<\/p>\n
Mr Menolascina admitted to four counts of criminal damage, all of which occurred in Kenmare on 10 May.<\/p>\n
He caused almost \u20ac28,000 worth of damage in Quills Woollen Market on High Street, by damaging 28 items of clothing.<\/p>\n
He also caused damage in the Lansdowne Hotel and Foley’s Craft Shop the same day, and caused around \u20ac2,500 worth of damage to a car.<\/p>\n
Killarney District Court heard the Director of Public Prosecutions directed Mr Menolascina could be prosecuted by summary in the District Court on a plea of guilty only.<\/p>\n
Mr Menolascina pleaded guilty to all charges, and his solicitor Brendan Ahern told the court he had a cheque for over \u20ac50,600 to compensate all the injured parties in the case.<\/p>\n
Judge Waters asked if Mr Ahern could enlighten him on why a 59-year-old married retiree with no previous convictions would do this.<\/p>\n
Mr Ahern said it was confirmed there were no intoxicants involved, nor was there any history of medical issues.<\/p>\n
He said his client recently came off medication, but he was not even sure if this would be a side effect.<\/p>\n
Mr Ahern said his client accepts he needs to be medically assessed when he returns to the United States.<\/p>\n
He said all the charges were criminal damage, and the full amount has now been repaid.<\/p>\n
Judge David Waters said the matter is serious, but the corollary was that it was a major undertaking for Mr Menolascina to raise the funds to pay victims back so timely.<\/p>\n
He said he would allow Mr Menolascina to benefit from the Probation Act and avoid a conviction.<\/p>\n
Judge Waters said this was because he is a 59-year-old man with no previous convictions here or in the US, he made an early guilty plea, and paid full recompense to the victims.<\/p>\n
Mr Menolascina had his passport returned, and he is booked on a flight to return to the US tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An American tourist has avoided a conviction after causing over \u20ac45,000 worth of criminal damage in one day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-457014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457014","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=457014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}