SUSPENDED SENTENCE FOR SALTHILL MAN FOR GEORGE BUSH DEATH THREATS

Date Published: 11-Jul-2008

A Salthill resident and former US naval engineer, who threatened to kill President George Bush, and blow up the American Embassy in Dublin, has been given a suspended two-year sentence at Galway Circuit Criminal Court.38 year old Declan Noel O’Shea, a native of Kilkenny, with a rental address at Emerson Avenue, Salthill, pleaded guilty in May to making hundreds of threatening phone calls to an FBI agent over a 9 year period.The court heard that O’Shea also made a hoax bomb call to the San Diego Police Department on February 6, 2004, claiming that he had placed a 700 pound bomb on a busy Interstate Highway. That was followed by further threats to blow up a U.S. guided missile destroyer the following day.A psychiatrist from the Central Mental Hospital gave evidence in court yesterday that O’Shea suffers from chronic paranoid schizophrenia and at the time of these offences had a delusional belief system, incorporating the FBI and the IRA. The psychiatrist said O’Shea was now in remsission, was in a stable relationship and was working as a security guard in the Eyre Square Shopping Centre. Judge Raymond Groarke imposed a two year sentence on O’Shea, which he suspended for four years on condition he keep the peace. He directed O’Shea to continue to see his local psychiatric service and he asked that service and the probation service to liaise in monitoring O’Shea’s ongoing mental state. The judge also prohibited O’Shea from having any future contact with the U.S. authorities or the U.S. Embassy in Dublin.