A DUBLIN man has pleaded guilty to possession of a semi-automatic rifle at a house in Finglas where video footage from a phone seized by gardai showed the weapon being fired.
Glen Ward, 32, appeared briefly this morning at the three-judge, non-jury Special Criminal Court.
Glen Ward, left, with brother Eric O’Driscoll, right[/caption]
He entered a guilty plea to the charge that on January 1, 2022 at an address in Finglas he was in possession of or had control of a .223 calibre Remington AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in circumstances giving rise to a reasonable inference that he did not have it for a lawful purpose.
Ward’s brother, Eric O’Driscoll, 23, previously pleaded guilty to possession of the same gun.
During a hearing last year, Det Inspector Damien Kelly told the court that during a search of a home in Finglas in February 2022, gardai recovered the semi-automatic rifle along with a military grade sub-machine gun and ammunition.
The guns were found to be in good condition and were successfully fired by a garda ballistics examiner, the detective said.
In June that year, gardai conducted an unrelated search of a taxi on the Tolka Valley Road and found a bank card in Eric O’Driscoll’s name and a phone that they were later able to connect to the defendant.
Det Insp Kelly said analysts found a video clip on the phone in which O’Driscoll could be seen taking the AR-15 rifle from another man and firing it from the rear of a home in Finglas.
In another clip, the firearms that had been seized in February 2022 were filmed having been laid out on a table at the same address in Finglas.
At O’Driscoll’s sentencing hearing in January, Seamus Clarke SC, acting for O’Driscoll, asked the court to be “as lenient as possible” given that his client’s three previous convictions relate to a single public order incident and he entered an early guilty plea.
Mr Clarke said O’Driscoll has been in custody since January 2024 and has been on 23-hour lockup for the past nine months.
While in custody he overheard a killing in a cell next to his own and saw the dead body the following morning.
While the maximum sentence for the firearms offence is 14 years, Mr Clarke said the court “does not have to enforce anything up to that level”.
He said the sentence should provide an opportunity for O’Driscoll to rehabilitate.
Ms Justice Melanie Greally adjourned sentencing of Ward until a date in April this year.
