Brave Alanna Quinn Idris says 'life I've lost only worth four and a half years' as teen is sentenced

• Published date: 24 March 2023
• Publication title: DublinLive (Ireland)

An emotional Alanna Quinn Idris, 18, said she didn't feel the sentence her attacker Darragh Lyons received was long enough. She added: "Being told today that what happened to me and the life that I've lost is only worth four-and-a-half years obviously isn't the best thing to hear. I've to be like this for the rest of my life

"And in four-and-a-half years he'll be out and about, I didn't really feel these consequences are justified considering how I have to be now for the rest of my life."

She spoke after teenager Lyons, who took part in what a judge termed a "savage attack", was jailed. The 19-year-old of Weir View, Glenaulin, Chapelizod, Dublin, pleaded guilty to assault causing serious harm and violent disorder on Ballyfermot Road on December 30, 2021.

Alanna, then aged 17, was hit in the face with the saddle of an electric scooter by another youth, fracturing her eye socket. In a victim impact statement delivered at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Wednesday, Ms Quinn Idris said her life as she knew it "came to an abrupt end" on the night of the attack.

She added: "I will never be the woman I was supposed to be – she died that night. Sometimes I wish I never woke up from when I was hit with that object."

In his judgment Judge Martin Nolan set a headline sentence of eight to nine years but reduced this on account of mitigating factors including Lyons' early plea, his cooperation, his lack of previous convictions and his young age.

The judge said if Lyons had been older, the prison term would have been substantially longer. Lyons also admitted assaulting causing harm to Ms Quinn Idris' friend Louis O'Sullivan during the same attack.

The incident took place a short time after a brief verbal dispute at a bus stop between Mr O'Sullivan and another man.

Two other men are facing trial in relation to the attack and cannot be named, while a fourth man could not be identified. Lyons did not...