Man found not guilty of burglary - The Munster Express

Man found not guilty of burglary The Munster Express

A man has been found not guilty of burglary following a recent two-day trial in Waterford.

Thomas Costigan (34) of 205 O’Connell Court, Waterford, was brought before Judge Eugene O’Kelly at Waterford Circuit Criminal Court at the beginning of June to contest a charge of burglary, contrary to Section 12 (1)(b) of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001. He pleaded not guilty and was produced in court for the trial from prison, where he is serving a sentence for an unrelated matter.

A jury of eight men and four women were empanelled for the trial, with Niall Storan BL prosecuting on behalf of the state, and Gareth Hayden BL acting as defence counsel for the accused.

The charge related to an incident that occurred on 21 January 2025, at the house of a couple in Waterford city. The couple were going away on holidays at the time and had a 7.00am flight from Dublin Airport that morning. After travelling to the airport via bus, the woman checked her purse in the queue for the flight, and noticed that €106 in cash was missing.

The court heard that the woman contacted her son, who found video ring doorbell footage of an intruder outside the house, wearing a surgical mask. The woman’s son sent this footage to Gardaí and an investigation commenced.

Mr. Storan opened the trial and told the jury that the case was built around the ‘unlawful entry’ of an intruder into a family’s home. He said that once the report was made to Gardaí, investigating Garda Denise Drennan identified the defendant as the man in the footage, and later executed a search warrant on his home where a jacket, crossbody bag, and a mask were found.

The woman involved firstly gave evidence, and told the court that she remembered placing €106 in her wallet the night before leaving for the holiday. Mr. Hayden asked what time the couple left Waterford on the bus to the airport, and she replied that it was around 2.00am that morning.

Garda Denise Drennan then played the video ring doorbell footage, consisting of five clips, to the court and gave evidence. Garda Drennan said she identified the accused as the man in the footage from his “build, posture, facial structure, and walk” She told the court that the surgical mask comes down at one point in the footage, which also led her to recognise the defendant from his facial features.

A jacket seized by Gardaí following a search of the accused’s home was also presented to the jury. Mr. Hayden asked Garda Drennan why she described the jacket as dark in her statement, but as light when giving evidence to the jury. Garda Drennan said that the jacket shown to the jury “was the one in the CCTV footage” as it had a fading North Face logo on it.

Mr. Hayden also stated that a cigarette butt was found outside the front door of the house, and was sent to Forensic Science Ireland (FSI) for testing. He said that FSI identified male DNA which did not belong to the defendant. The DNA found was put through a national system but FSI could not come up with a match, Mr. Hayden said.

In addition, Mr. Hayden asked Garda Drennan if the time on the video ring doorbell footage, which showed 5.24am, was accurate to real time, to which she replied it was, as far as she was aware.

Sergeant Maurice Hanlon also gave evidence, stating he was present during the execution of the search warrant at the accused’s home. Sgt Hanlon said that he, along with Garda Drennan and two other colleagues, seized a jacket, a surgical facemask and a crossbody bag from the home, and that no one was present at the time.

In his closing speech, Mr. Storan highlighted that after Garda Drennan identified the defendant from the footage, a search warrant was executed by Gardaí on the same day, where they seized the items.

Mr. Storan also made reference to Garda Drennan identifying the accused from his gait, stating that Gardaí make identifications in “a number of ways.” He said that although the defendant’s DNA was not identified on the cigarette butt, the prosecution case relied on “good Garda work” rather than this.

He concluded by telling the jury that the evidence heard was ‘compelling.’

Mr. Hayden told the jury that “although it seemed as if an intruder entered the home in the early hours of the morning”, the woman gave evidence that the couple left on the 2.00am bus, and Garda Drennan testified that the doorbell footage was captured at 5.24am.

“The difficulty is that they were either on the bus or already at the airport when the €106 was taken,” Mr. Hayden said, adding that there was something “fundamentally wrong” with the evidence given, as the woman would have ‘presumably’ had her handbag with her on the bus.

The barrister told the court there was an ‘issue’ with the reliance of the jacket as ‘real evidence’ as there was a visible patch on the back of the jacket in the footage ‘not present’ on the jacket shown to the jury. He added that in relation to the surgical mask found at the defendant’s home, “we’ve all had multiple of them” lying around the house left over from the COVID period, and that there was no cash discovered during the search.

Mr. Hayden described Garda Drennan’s evidence of identifying the accused from this gait and posture as ‘tenuous’ and asked the jury to factor in the possibility that “we all make mistakes.” He concluded by highlighting to the jury that the timing of the incident is a “physical impossibility” as the bus would have been on the way to Dublin at the time.

Following a deliberation of just under an hour, the jury found the accused not guilty of burglary.

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