50-year-old jailed for defecating in public

Damien Joseph Young, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to indecent behaviour and criminal damage.

He also admitted stealing a pair of trousers worth £4 from a charity shop.

The offences were committed on June 17.

Derry Magistrate’s Court heard the 50-year-old was caught on CCTV defecating in the stairwell of the Quayside Shopping Centre.

Police attended and the centre manager saidthere was human excrement on the floor of level one. It had been cleaned prior to police arrival.

Young was identified on the CCTV and police saw him a short time later outside a Barnardo’s charity shop.

Staff there reported that a pair of cream trousers worth £4 had been stolen from the shop. Young was seen to be wearing these.

It was revealed the defendant, who has 298 previous convictions, is in breach of a suspended sentence.

Defence counsel Eoghan Devlin told the court his client has a long standing alcohol problem and the ‘cycle of his life’ involves Young going in and out of prison.

Mr. Devlin said the 50-year-old has become ‘totally institutionalised.’

The barrister told the court Young was once a talented sportsman but his dependency on alcohol took over.

Jailing Young for six months, Deputy District Judge Ted Magill said ‘theft from a charity shop is particularly distasteful and defecating in a public place is utterly unnecessary.I have absolutely no doubt there would have been public toilets in the shopping centre’.