A man who fired 37 shotgun rounds in the direction of gardaí to provoke them into killing him has been jailed for six and a half years.
Patrick Kinch, 48, told gardaí that he wanted to “go out in a blaze of glory” but believed he would not go to Heaven if he killed himself.
Kinch, of Deerpark Square, Tallaght, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin circuit criminal court to endangering gardaí by firing a stolen sawn-off shotgun during a siege that lasted almost 15 hours. Kinch also admitted damaging the house where the siege took place and causing damage to a garda vehicle.
Garda Rory Maher told the court that in the early hours of December 20, 2015, Natasha Donnelly, Kinch’s partner at the time, noticed Kinch behaving erratically in the house they shared. Ms Donnelly thought that Kinch had been drinking and had taken Valium. She became afraid and left the house along with her children.
Garda Maher said that Kinch told Ms Donnelly she could call gardaí. When Emergency Response Unit officers arrived Kinch fired at them several times from an upstairs window while demanding that they shoot him. He eventually threw the shotgun out of the window and was arrested shortly afterwards.
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Judge Martin Nolan suspended the final three and a half years of a ten-year prison term.