A man has been jailed for seven years for firing a machine gun through the window of a family home while a woman and her children were inside.
Laurence Grocott, with an address at Cushlawn Park, Tallaght in Dublin, opened fire after the woman told him there were kids in the house.
On March 3rd last year, the woman answered a knock on the door of her home in Carrickmines in Dublin.
She didn't recognise the man standing before her when she opened it.
When she noticed he was armed with a sub-machine gun, she slammed the door shut after screaming that there were kids in the house.
Laurence Grocott then fired two shots through her front window.
Both hit the mantlepiece in the front room, just a few feet away from her two young daughters.
CCTV footage from inside the house showed the girls cowering with their hands covering their ears before their mother bundled them upstairs.
She told gardaí she thought he said the name 'Andy' when she answered the door, but nobody of that name lived there.
Grocott was sentenced to eight years in prison today, with the final year suspended.
