A young man was in critical condition in hospital last night after an alleged one-punch attack.
The victim suffered serious head injuries during the incident which occurred at around 2.30am on Sunday on Dublin’s D’Olier Street, near the junction with Fleet Street.
Gardai rushed to the scene where emergency services treated the 24-year-old before removing him by ambulance to St James’s Hospital.
Read more: Man charged after serious assault in city centre leaves person in critical condition
Officers carried out a follow-up search under warrant at a house in Kildare and a man in his 30s was arrested and questioned by gardai.
He was charged yesterday and will appear before the Criminal Courts of Justice this morning at 10.30am.
The man in custody is a foreign national and gardai believe the incident may have been a so-called “one punch attack”.
The Irish Mirror has learned that the victim is originally from London. Gardai yesterday appealed for witnesses to come forward and asked anyone with camera footage from the location at the time of the incident to provide it to them.
Independent councillor Mannix Flynn, the vice chair of the Dublin City Joint Policing Committee, called for a special task force to be established to tackle a surge in criminality.
He said: “First of all I’d be very concerned that the person would recover and my concern would be about his family, it’s a very difficult time.
“Unfortunately, it’s another appalling incident in our society.”
Cllr Flynn, who said he is deeply concerned by the lawlessness on city streets at night, added: “It’s very difficult to recover from the trauma of an unprovoked assault on the street, it takes a lifetime because of the post traumatic stress that surrounds it. I have a block of flats [Mercer Street] in Dublin where there was shots fired on a weekend [April 8] and they’re in absolute post traumatic disorder, the children are terrified that someone’s going to come and shoot at them and there’s nobody actually giving them assistance.”
Cllr Flynn insisted many serious incidents are not being reported in the city because of intimidation and a lack of confidence that justice will be delivered.
He added: “The general citizens need the Minister [for Justice], the Taoiseach and the Tanaiste to start initiating the processes at how we actually prevent things from happening and delivering the consequences.
“It’s never the knife they are carrying, it’s the anger that they’re carrying and the violence that they’re carrying that causes the offence. We need to have a special task force within the city to be able to deal with these matters and we know that when there is such attention given to areas, like for instance like when we gave it to the north inner city, how the State got great successes.”
Gardai appealed for witnesses and said: “Shortly after 2.30am, gardai and Emergency Services attended after a man was seriously injured in the course of an incident on D’Olier Street, near the junction with Fleet Street.”
Read more: Man in critical condition with head injury following serious assault in Dublin city centre
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