Tipperary man 'unhappy' with escort being on phone was stabbed in back and abdomen

A man who engaged the services of an escort at a Tipperary hotel was attacked by the woman’s husband after he complained that she was on the phone while providing the service, Nenagh Circuit Criminal Court was told.

The court heard that the injured party, a 21-year-old local man, met a female on the Escorts Ireland website and arranged to meet her at Racket Hall Hotel in Roscrea on November 17, 2021.

They met in a room in the hotel and he paid €150 to the woman. But the court heard that the man was “not happy with the service” and demanded the return of €100.

A dispute ensued and the woman used her phone to contact her partner, Florentin Marin, 30, of no fixed abode, who was in a car in the hotel car park.

Mr Marin, whom the gardaí understood to be the woman’s husband, came up to the room and punched her client into the face.

He then produced a knife and stabbed the injured party in the abdomen and back.

Mr Marin then helped his partner gather up her belongings and they left the hotel, leaving the injured party lying on the hotel room floor.

The man recovered and left a short time later.

When he arrived home, a friend contacted the gardaí on seeing his injuries. He spent two weeks in hospital, receiving treatment for a laceration to his spleen, a collapsed lung and kidney wound.

Garda Margaret Slevin told the court that Mr Marin was tracked down through his partner’s profile on the Escorts Ireland website and the car seen leaving the hotel.

Mr Marin was arrested in Wicklow and admitted to “going crazy” and attacking his partner’s client.

He said he threw the knife into a field while driving away from the hotel.

Mr Marin was charged with assault causing harm and production of an article in the course of a dispute. He had no previous convictions. The injured party declined to make a victim impact statement.

The court heard that an incident occurred because the injured party was “dissatisfied with the service” he had paid Mr Marin’s partner for.

He complained that the lady was “on her phone all the time while providing the service”.

She claimed that she was “pushed and slapped by her client” and sought help from Mr Marin.

Defence counsel Bill O’Brien, BL, established that the knife used was a penknife, which was produced in order to “scare” the dissatisfied client.

The two men punched each other and “things got out of hand”.

Mr Marin, a Romanian national, had been in Ireland for only three weeks prior to the incident.

He and his partner had been visiting hotels around the country making money from her service.

He had remained in custody since his arrest on November 18, 2021 and, given that he was in a foreign country and unable to speak English, found life very difficult in prison.

“He really wants to go home back to Romania and not come back to Ireland,” Mr O’Brien said.

Judge Cormac Quinn said one of the medical reports stated that the injured party could have died were it not for the emergency procedure he underwent in hospital.

The judge accepted Mr Marin’s remorse for his actions as outlined in letters of apology he had written both to the court and the injured party.

Mr Marin’s family had raised €2,500, which Judge Quinn directed to be paid to the injured party.

He imposed a prison sentence amounting to three years and nine months, with the final nine months suspended on the defendant’s own bond of €200 to keep the peace in prison and on his release.

The sentence was backdated to November 18, when Mr Marin was taken into custody.