A man entered a store in Portlaoise, picked up a heater and brought it to the checkout, where he sought a refund for the item, despite not having purchased it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When staff refused the refund, he left the store with the heater under his arm.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Arising from the incident, the man was before a sitting earlier this month of Portlaoise District Court summonsed with theft.<\/p>\n
Thomas Reilly (31), Beaupark Mews, Clongriffin, Dublin 13 pleaded guilty to the offence that took place on July 26, 2023 at Aldi, Kylekiproe Road, Portlaoise.<\/p>\n
Garda Sergeant JJ Kirby said that Mr Reilly went into the store.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He made his way to the middle aisle and took a \u20ac70 heater to the checkout.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When there, he said he wanted a refund for it, despite not paying for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The staff refused and he left the store with the heater before he was apprehended and the heater recovered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was arrested on the spot and I made admissions to the garda,\u201d said Mr Reilly.<\/p>\n
The court was told that the defendant has 16 previous convictions.<\/p>\n
Solicitor Philip Meagher said that his client was going through financial difficulties and was living with his in-laws in Portlaoise at the time.<\/p>\n
Mr Meagher said the heater was returned in its box in a resaleable condition.<\/p>\n
Judge Andrew Gubbins convicted Mr Reilly of the offence, fined him \u20ac200 and gave him six months to pay the fine.<\/p>\n
\n Funded by the Court Reporting Scheme.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man entered a store in Portlaoise, picked up a heater and brought it to the checkout, where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[271453,61,60,10562,43],"class_list":["post-639191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-laois-nationalist","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-leinster","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639191","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=639191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}