‘Out of control’ man jailed for unprovoked attacks on two pensioners in Youghal

Judge Cormac Quinn imposed a total sentence of five-and-a-half years with the last two-and-a-half years suspended at Cork Circuit Criminal Court. Detective Garda John O’Donovan outlined details of the incidents which occurred on December 11, 2023.

The 69-year-old man heard banging on the front door of his apartment and when he went to the door, Adam Abrahams forced his way into the house and pursued the homeowner upstairs. During a struggle the defendant put his arm around his neck from behind and had him in a choke-hold.

Mr Abrahams said: “I am going to kill you, do you want me to kill you?” The elderly man managed to break free and contact his son to tell him he was being attacked.

By the time the young man arrived to assist his father he saw that he was on the floor and again Adam Abrahams had his arm around his neck. Det. Garda O’Donovan said the man managed to force the attacker away.

The accused left briefly and then returned, pulling a knife from his pocket and lunging at the elderly man’s son, narrowly missing him. He lunged again causing the man to fall over at the scene.

It was only then that Adam Abrahams left the area. A short time later he attacked a 71-year-old man walking home along Cork Hill, Youghal, at 6.30pm.

“He attempted to hit him with a glass bottle. He kept shouting, ‘I’ll f***ing kill you.’ He struck him with his fist into the eye, knocking him to the ground. He was pulled away by the passer-by.

“It was a completely unprovoked attack which left him very shaken. He is an elderly man living alone. It was a random attack with no background. There was no connection between the defendant and the injured parties in these cases,” Det. Garda O’Donovan.

A particularly worrying feature of the first strangulation attack was that the victim had an underlying medical condition involving breathing difficulties.

The 28-year-old was previously given a fully suspended two-year sentence for assault causing harm where he struck another man in Youghal across the head with a hurley.

‘No rhyme or reason’

Elizabeth O’Connell, defence senior counsel, said the accused wrote a letter of apology to the first injured party already and offered his apologies to all of the injured parties.

Ms O’Connell accepted: “There was no rhyme or reason to these. There was no discernible rationale for either event — no robbery, no taking of items. He was extremely intoxicated.

“He started drinking at the age of 11 and escalated to a very serious point when he was 16. They are grave offences. He did these things because he was absolutely out of control. They are not premeditated and calculated offences. There was no malice — nothing targeted, it was the product of extreme intoxication.”