A Dublin teenager who repeatedly slammed a door into a girl’s head and set fire to her hair will be sentenced later for this and for assaulting a passerby with a broken bottle.
A witness told gardaí that Dylan Lynch (18) told him to take a video of the door banging the teenage girl's head and share it with friends on Snapchat.
The witness said he did this using Lynch’s own phone. He said the girl, who had been drinking vodka with a group in Lynch’s bedroom, had looked “drowsy” when she was put sitting up.
He gave an account of Lynch taking a deodorant can and lighter and creating a flame at the back of the girl’s head. Lynch then started cutting clumps out of the girl’s singed hair and throwing them out the window.
Garda Sarah Hogan told Monika Leech BL, prosecuting, that girls who had been with the injured party eventually took her out of the house. The girl and her mother complained to gardaí the following day.
Lynch, of Avonbeg Gardens, Tallaght, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assaulting the teenage girl at his home on July 21st, 2018.
He also pleaded guilty to assaulting a former Tallaght Hospital lab technician and robbing his phone at Sean Walsh Park, Tallaght, on April 16th, 2018.
Garda Gary Duffy said Lynch hit the lab technician about five times in the head with a vodka bottle, which broke during the assault. At times the injured party had tried to run away, but Lynch caught him and resumed the attack.
Victim impact statement
The man, in a victim impact statement referred to in court, described receiving nine stitches to his left temple, staples to a wound on the top of his head and having to get his right ear glued.
Gda Duffy told Ms Leech that the man had passed Lynch and two girls while walking home from work. He had noted Lynch looking worked up and agitated and that he had two vodka bottles.
When Lynch threw one bottle onto the road, the injured party turned to face him as he was afraid of being assaulted by the second. Lynch took this as a confrontation and began the attack.
Another man, not before the courts, joined in at the end of the assault holding a switchblade and the pair robbed the injured party’s phone. After this, the victim was able to run for help.
The court heard the attack had influenced his decision to move abroad to work.
Gda Duffy agreed with Sarah Jane O’Callaghan BL, defending, that her client had a very dysfunctional background and that there had been tragic and violent deaths in his family.
He accepted a psychological report assessment that since Lynch has been in custody he has had “a maturing of his insight” and an attitude change to crime and victims.
Judge Melanie Greally remanded Lynch in continuing custody and adjourned the sentence until later this month when she will hear a defence plea in mitigation.