ALANNA IDRIS QUINN, the woman who was “cowardly” attacked in an “unprovoked” assault in 2021, has said the three-year sentence her attacker recieved yesterday is not equal to the life-altering injuries she must live with “forever”.
Josh Cummins, aged 19, was jailed for four years, with one year suspended, yesterday after he pleaded guilty to the assault of Alanna Idris Quinn and a friend of hers in Ballyfermot on 30 December 2021.
During the attack, Idris Quinn was hit in the face with the saddle of an electric scooter. She was knocked unconscious and left with a shattered tooth, broken cheekbone and a ruptured eyeball.
“The scale doesn’t feel balanced,” Idris Quinn told Virgin Media Television’s Tonight Show.
The punishment doesn’t fit the crime I feel.”
“With everything that I have to go through – that I’ve been going through and that I have to go through still for the rest of my life – it doesn’t just end for me.
“For him just to serve three years and then after that he can just forget about it when he grows up. It just doesn’t feel fair whatsoever,” she said.
Ms Justice Pauline Codd said the “unprovoked”, “shocking”, and “egregious” attack had destroyed two lives, both Cummins’ own “but much more fundamentally that of Ms Quinn Idris”.
She said the aggravating factors of the attack include that Cummins brought a hurl and “used it viciously,” the “life-changing” injuries sustained by Idris Quinn and the fact that Cummins continued fighting while she lay unconscious and seriously injured.
“Anytime I look at myself, I see it,” Idris Quinn told the programme. “But then anybody I meet as well, it’s not like they see a normal face.
“Regardless if they know or not, they’re going to see me and they’re go ‘Oh, what’s gone on there?’
I don’t want that. If I didn’t lose my eye – it still would’ve been just as bad – but I could’ve been put past this. Clearly, I’ll wear it on my face forever.”
The judge yesterday said the group of men involved in the attack were “cowardly” and that “there must be general deterrence from such intense street violence”.
Judge Codd noted that “the consequences of violence, however brief, can be devastating” and described Ms Quinn Idris as an “immensely brave and positive person” who showed “maturity beyond her years”.
“Often young men don’t think of the consequences of their actions,” she said, adding that when they commit violent acts they “frequently do this as part of a herd mentality.
Idris Quinn told a court in March, when another young male involved in the attack was convicted, that people around her used to tell tell her she should model.
“I didn’t like it, it made me feel uncomfortable. I never felt I was beautiful, but I wish I’d listened to them. I’ve never been the most confident girl, but I had a little, until my attackers took that away,” she said.
The co-accused, Darragh Lyons (19), was sentenced to four-and-a-half years earlier this year.
Quinn Idris said in the court yesterday that she will remember the attack “every day for the rest of my life” and that she does not believe Cummins is remorseful.
The court previously heard that Cummins is the youngest of the accused and that there is no suggestion that he struck Quinn Idris. He pleaded guilty in July 2023.
Additional reporting by Jessica Magee and David O’Sullivan
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say