Man ‘went to launch’ beer bottle at Dublin garda's head after being denied her phone number

Jordan Fitzgerald (28) claimed he was a “collector and a hoarder” who had found the baton in Dublin city centre earlier and did not have it as a weapon.

Finding him guilty, Judge Paula Murphy said the baton did not look like a “collector’s item”.

She adjourned the case at Dublin District Court for probation and community service reports.

Fitzgerald, of The Close, College Wood Park, Clane, Co Kildare, admitted threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour on August 29, 2020, but denied possession of a weapon to cause injury, incapacitate or intimidate.

A garda said she saw the accused but had no interaction with him before he came up to her in Temple Bar and asked “out of nowhere” for her personal phone number.

She refused and said he could take her shoulder number.

She was about to leave when the accused, who had a bottle of Budweiser in his hand, “went to launch it at my head”.

He ran to Wellington Quay and she was startled but followed him to where he was hiding behind a vehicle.

He seemed to be looking for someone and when she asked him what he was doing he “told me I was a f**king c**t”.

His fists were clenched, his eyes were “wild” and she felt “really threatened” and pepper-sprayed him as she arrested him. She found a wooden baton with a sharpened end inside his jacket.

Fitzgerald told the court he was a collector and could have “all sorts on my person.”

He said he had found the baton and it was in his backpack, not his jacket. “I did not sharpen it, that is the way I found it,” he said. “I probably had other bits of rubbish on me too.”

His solicitor Aoife McNicholl argued he had not produced the item and the weapon charge was not made out.