Nurse’s shock at finding nasty note on vandalised car
A CO Armagh nurse says she was “shocked and very upset” after her car was damaged in a car park at Craigavon Area Hospital and a note left branding her a “c**p selfish parker”.
Ciara Mallon returned to her vehicle last Monday night after a 13-hour shift in the hospital’s A&E department, to find the nasty note on her Vauxhall Astra.
She also found her car had been scratched with a key the whole way down one side in an attack the PSNI have called “disgusting”.
The Southern Health and Social Care Trust says that it will now be running awareness sessions for staff, patients and visitors at both Craigavon Area and Daisy Hill hospitals.
After sharing details on social media, Ciara received a wave of public sympathy and said she felt “heartened” by the kind words of support she received.
And she hit back at whoever damaged her car, saying: “Sorry that I wasn’t overly concerned about my one wheel over the parking line at 7.30am when it was 0 degrees and I was exhausted. Scumbag.”
She added: “I was shocked and very upset. Nothing like this has ever happened me before, but I don’t know about whether it’s happened in the car park before.
“I never expected so many people to share it (the Facebook post) and support it.”
Ciara doesn’t yet know the cost of the damage to her vehicle, but she has posted a video which shows the deep scrape, possibly caused by a key, running from the driver’s door to the fuel cap.
A PSNI spokesman said: “Someone had scraped the entire driver’s side of her car, a blue Vauxhall Astra, from the fuel cap to the driver’s door. Someone had also left a note saying ‘c**p selfish parker’.”
“Let that sink in for a moment. A nurse, whose job is literally life saving, had her car keyed, apparently due to someone taking exception to her parking. Disgusting, and not something that anyone with any information about it should stand for.”
While appealing for information, the PSNI revealed that a second vehicle, a white van, was damaged in the same car park the following day. They said: “Workmen — on site trying to make services even better for everyone — had their van damaged. The white VW Transporter had the rear door forced between 1.30pm and 2.30pm.
“An attack on either is an attack on all of us, and should never be tolerated,” said the PSNI.
A spokesman for the Southern Trust said: “We are very concerned about the recent vandalism to vehicles on the Craigavon Area Hospital site and have been working with the PSNI to investigate these incidents.
“Security is a priority around the site. We continue to remind staff and contractors of how to improve their own personal security and have arranged for PSNI to come to both Craigavon and Daisy Hill hospitals to host awareness sessions with staff, patients and visitors.”