Man who pursued niece with hammer given suspended sentence

By Isabel Hayes

A man went after his niece with a claw hammer, chased her into a cafe and banged her head off a metal counter after he had a nightmare about her, a court has heard.

Thomas Lawrence (62) went to his niece’s house early on a Saturday morning in August 2020 and started shouting abuse at her and her husband, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard.

When the woman and her husband went around to her uncle’s apartment a short while later to find out what was going on, he emerged from the building with a claw hammer and chased his niece down the road.

When she went into a local cafe and asked the barista working there to call gardaí, Lawrence came in, grabber her by the hair, punched her head and banged it repeatedly off a metal counter as aghast customers tried to intervene until he stopped. He was arrested a short time later.

Lawrence, of James Street, Dublin 8, pleaded guilty to one count of assault causing harm to his niece at the same location on August 29, 2020.

He also pleaded guilty to one count of attempted theft of three bottles of wine from Spar on Dame Street on October 18, 2014. When asked by Judge Martin Nolan why this case took 10 years to come to court, the investigating garda said Covid delayed things and Lawrence took a few bench warrants on the matter.

A victim impact statement from Lawrence’s niece was handed into court, but not read out. She suffered superficial injuries as a result of the assault.

Pieter Le Vert BL, defending, said there was a dispute in the extended family around this time involving Lawrence’s niece. He said his client had a drinking problem and that the night before the incident, he had been drinking and had a nightmare in which his niece was shouting at him.

Lawrence was “reeling from this nightmare” and was still drunk when he went to his niece’s house and started verbally abusing her, defence counsel said.

He has a number of previous convictions but has not come to garda attention since this latest incident. He has health difficulties including pancreatitis, epilepsy, acute gastroenteritis, chronic depression and alcoholism.

Passing down sentence on Monday Judge Martin Nolan said that but for Lawrence’s health issues, he would have jailed him. Instead, he handed down a 20-month sentence which he suspended in full.