The man who snatched a woman’s mobile phone last year and forced her to drive to a hospital in Dublin is back, this time for a second time.
The man has appeared in court charged with stealing a mobile phone from a woman in Dublin’s west, in the same area where he stole her in May 2016.
The woman, who did not want to be named, said she and her husband had been away at the time of the theft, but did not realise they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time until her husband’s arrest.
She said he had stolen the phone while she was travelling home from a party, but had not gone home to tell her.
“It was quite surreal and terrifying, we were shocked,” she said.
“We were just very shocked.
We were like, ‘what happened?'”
The woman said the theft had happened on a busy road, near a busy bus stop.
She and her partner, who was driving the car, were stopped by police when they spotted the man’s vehicle and alerted the driver.
“The lady [in the car] was very upset and upset,” she explained.
“She was really upset, we tried to explain it to her, she said, ‘I’m just scared’.”
The woman was also shaken up by the incident, and said she had been robbed at gunpoint.
The court heard the man was arrested after police found the phone on the side of the road and DNA evidence suggested it belonged to the woman.
The Dublin District Court heard he had previous convictions for burglary, stealing property, criminal damage and assaulting a police officer.
The accused has been remanded in custody until his next appearance in court on December 11.