Care home incident: Care assistant who dragged an elderly one-legged man across floor is spared jail

Sentencing Aine McCreesh at Armagh Magistrates Court, sitting in Newry, District Judge Anne Marshall told the 28-year-old while the custody threshold has been crossed given the age and vulnerabilities of her victim and so she deserved a three month prison sentence, she suspended that sentence for a year because the defendant had a previously clear record.

As defence counsel Patrick Taylor revealed that McCreesh still maintains her innocence and will be lodging an appeal against both the conviction and the sentence, the judge granted bail of £500 pending appeal.

Following a brief contest earlier this year McCreesh, from the Dobbin Hill Road in Armagh, was convicted of a single count of ill treating or neglecting a mental health patient on 4 July last year and the court heard that as a result, the 28-year-old had been sacked.

Rehearsing the facts of the case during her brief sentencing remarks, District Judge Marshall outlined how she had heard “clear, compelling and credible evidence” from two of McCreesh’s former colleagues at the Hamilton Court Care Home how the victim, “an elderly man with one leg,” was making his way around the home.

“They described it as ‘bum shuffling’,” said the judge, adding that according to their “distressing evidence,” the victim did that most nights but when she saw him, McCreesh declared “to f*** with this, I’m not sitting here watching him all night.”

Grabbing the crippled pensioner by both arms, McCreesh “pulled him out of the day room and dragged him into the hallway,” said District Judge Marshall.

Lodging a plea in mitigation, Mr Taylor said that effectively “her life has been destroyed” by this single incident and that having worked as a care assistant since she was 17, McCreesh “has lost a job that she loved and one that she is unlikely to be able to return to.”

He conceded that with her continued protests of innocence “sentencing options are limited but I ask you to temper justice with mercy given the effect this has had on this lady.”

District Judge Marshall said there were multiple aggravating features in the case including “the vulnerability of the victim when the defendant was in a position of caring for him” and that her former colleagues were “extremely upset” at having to recount the incident from the witness box.

“While this has had an impact on the defendant and her mental health, I’m satisfied it has also had an impact on the injured party,” said the judge as she imposed the suspended prison sentence.

She told McCreesh that not withstanding her appeal, “I’m quite sure that there will be no repetition but I do warn you that if you go her into trouble in the next year you will go to custody for three months.”