TWO drink and drug-adled Belfast men who invaded the privacy of a family home during which a six-month-old baby had a knife pointed at his throat, have been jailed for four years.
Judge Paul Ramsey QC told 30-year-old Seamus Rooney and 26-year-old Tyrone Boyle while their robbery plan may have been "spontenously hatched in the middle of a drink and drug binge", their victims, "subjected to a nightmarish ordeal" would not have known this.
The Belfast Crown Court judge said "it was a distressing and traumatic experience, one of sheer terror" and although short in duration, "must have seemed like an eternity to the occupants".
Judge Ramsey said while the home owner was left feeling "violated", and to others it was scariest moment of their lives, Rooney and Boyle's invasion was "particularly reprehensible" as the presence of an infant did nothing to deter their demands for cash and jewellery.
Although Boyle was identified as threatening the baby boy, and Rooney as fighting with the child's grandmother, Judge Ramsey said there was nothing to distinguish between them, ordering each serve four years in jail followed by four years on supervised licenced parole.
Both Boyle, with a north Belfast hostel address, and Rooney, of St Dympna's Park, Downpatrick, had previously pleaded guilty to robbing the family, of phones, computers and cash on November 23, 2017.
Prosecutor David Russell told an earlier hearing the infant's young mum begged for his life and that of her own mother after the pair armed themselves with knives from a block in the kitchen of the family's Stranmillis home.
She later described the scene as something from "a horror movie", telling police how Boyle stood with a knife "pointing blade down towards my son in his cot. I thought he was going to kill my baby, the knife moved towards him, it was as if he was going to stab him, it was almost touching his neck. I was on my knees pleading and begging the male not to hurt my baby".
Mr Russell added that when her mother was woken by the disturbance, she came down, only to be confronted by Rooney, but she managed to eventually bundle him out her front door as she grappled with him for the knife which was pointing at her stomach.
Defence QC Charles MacCreanor for Boyle said "this was going to be a simple burglarly - opportunistic", but that the men lifted two knives once inside the house and that it ended in an absolute ordeal for those present.
Patrick Lyttle QC for Rooney said it was conceded from the outset it was an appalling case. However, he added, while his client was "certainly out of his mind" on drink and drugs it was out of character for a man "normally a quite placid individual - not a hard man or a vicious individual".
