A thief jailed for stealing Noah Donohoe’s laptop has been handed a one-month sentence for shoplifting.
aryl Paul walked into a pharmacy on Ballymena’s Queen Street in April 2019, lifted two Nicorette sprays worth £58, put them in his bag and walked out, a court in the town was told.
The 36-year-old was identified from CCTV footage, but the goods were not recovered.
A defense solicitor told the hearing Paul had served other custodial sentences since the incident, so he could have been brought before the court earlier.
A judge said while the defendant had a “very poor record” amounting to almost 200 convictions, a pre-sentence report was “surprisingly positive because you’re using your time in custody constructively”.
Paul, whose address was given as Maghaberry jail, was handed a one-month prison sentence and ordered to pay a £25 offender levy.
The habitual thief was jailed for three months last year for stealing Noah’s rucksack, which contained a laptop.
Three days after the 14-year-old went missing in June 2020, Paul and a woman, Maria Nolan, went into a Cash Converters in Belfast and attempted to sell the computer, only for staff to turn them down and alert the PSNI.
He claimed he took the laptop home after finding it propped up against a wall near Ulster University in the city centre.
“He said he didn’t know the bag belonged to the missing boy, and if he had known that, he would have returned it immediately,” a prosecution lawyer told a court at the time.
A defense barrister said the police accepted there was “no personal overlap” between Paul and Noah, and the crime was down to “an opportunistic, dishonest person finding a rucksack and treating it as his own”.
CCTV showed Paul in another part of the city at the time Noah would have been passing the university.
He later said: “If I could turn back the clock, I would. Not handing that bag into the police straight away was a huge mistake.
“People have been saying all sorts of lies about me – that I was involved in Noah’s death and much more sinister things.
“My heart goes out to that wee lad’s family. I have three daughters of my own and would never hurt a child.
“Yes, I should have handed it to the cops, but that’s the only thing I did wrong. Now I’m being made a scapegoat because I’m an easy target.”