Grattan Park Man’s Second Sentence For Demanding Money With Menaces

Zach Campbell

urrently serving an 8-year prison term for demanding money with menaces, Zach Campbell is about to be sentenced again after pleading guilty to a second, similar offence.

The 35-year-old Grattan Park resident plead guilty this week to the crime at a sitting of the Wicklow Circuit Criminal Court.

According to a report by Darragh McCann in today’s Bray People, the accused admitted to making an unwarranted demand with menaces on June 15th, 2023 that the complainant at Rockview Close in Newtown pay him a sum of cash.

Campbell’s solicitor Michael O’Connor informed the court that his client was currently serving a sentence for a similar offence, having been given 8 years in 2019 after demanding money from a family in Newcastle, Co Wicklow. When it was alleged in court that one of the men was carrying a bat and the other an object resembling a knife, Campbell’s alibi was that he had been at Rainforest Adventure Golf – which didn’t convince the jury of nine men and three women.

It was also revealed that his criminal past dates back to the 2010s, having received a sentence in 2015 at Wexford Circuit Court for stealing a mini-extractor and trailer from Trinity Hire. He had produced a driving licence at the time under the name John Lawless, later being identified by Greystones gardaí through the CCTV footage.

His counsel at the 2015 trial told the court that the offence was linked to his client’s drug addiction along with pressures to pay off a substantial debt.

An appeal by Campbell over the severity of his 2019 conviction was dismissed by the Court Of Appeal, who found that the sentence reflected the severity of the serious nature of the offending.

Sentencing was adjourned until June 23rd, but Judge Sinéad Ní Chúlachaáin warned that there was a backlog of cases, and sentencing might not occur on that date.