Robbed, then spat on by gang member
‘I’ve been raided 17 times: One gang stole €3,000 in car parts and all they got was a €250 f ine and suspended sentences. Who says crime doesn’t pay?’
IT IS the dead of night and businessman Sam Johnston feels something is not right. He pulls on his clothes and leaves his wife and children sleeping to go and check on his garage and toy shop.
Such is his level of fear from gangs of thieves roaming the countryside.
‘You just get this feeling. I wouldn’t be sleeping right or anything,’ Mr Johnston told the Irish Mail on Sunday. His businesses have been raided 17 times in the past six years, most recently earlier this month when two burglars took €6,000 worth of tools.
On that day, Mr Johnston, who runs a farm equipment business in Longford, was dealing with a customer, when two well-known burglars blatantly helped themselves to the contents of his and a customer’s van.
CCTV footage, seen by the MoS, shows the men doing a U-turn and pulling up to the rear of Mr Johnston’s van. One stays in the car, while the other looks around before breaking into the van and swiping the tools.
He then breaks into the second van. ‘Three minutes is all it took them and they walked away with €6,000 worth of tools,’ Mr Johnston said. ‘They have absolutely no fear, €5,000 from the red van, and €1,000 from me.’
In another incident, Mr Johnston, who is a rally driver on the side, had his warehouse broken into at night. Some €3,000 worth of car parts were taken. The gang was caught and charged but were given a €250 fine and a six-month suspended sentence.
‘Who says crime doesn’t pay? It paid for them that day, I’d nearly do that myself,’ he said. When he approached the Romanian gang, who rented a nearby unit, he was spat at. ‘I went over, probably a little heavy-handed, with a couple of lads but all I wanted was my stuff back... They laughed. The woman spat in my face.
‘I started to kick off; they rang the gardaí and the gardaí calmed me down. The gang told me they’ll find out where I live and smash the windows. They have nothing, just rented accommodation and nothing to lose, and I have everything. I see one of them around the town and every time he sees me, he smiles and waves at me in jest.’
The thieves in his latest raid tied a rope around the two door handles and pulled them open with a car. He has spent €12,000 on security since 2011 but has lost tens of thousands in robberies, not including shoplifting which is rife in the toy shop.
But he has high praise for the local gardaí. He said: ‘They are trying their best. You just need twice as many of them as there are at the minute.’
‘These people have nothing to worry about. If you take it from start to finish, they get free legal aid and a fine and suspended sentence,’ he added. ‘Maybe if something was taken off them, that might be a start. Like something from their dole money because, at the moment, they just don’t care.’
‘You get your Pádraig Nally [the farmer who, in 2004, shot dead Traveller John Ward who had been trespassing on his property. Mr Nally’s conviction for manslaughter was quashed in 2006] and, in fairness to him, you are driven closer and closer to it.
‘I have a gun and a gun licence at home and I said it to a garda that I am being driven closer to that point. He told me if the alarm goes off and you get your gun and drive three miles out here and shoot somebody, that is intent, because I’d have time to think.
‘So you can protect your home but not your workplace. I don’t know what I am supposed to do. Keep spending money on barriers and alarms but what those fellas did the other day, how do you stop that? It’s the whole court thing, that is where it is all wrong.’
A hundred metres up the road Leonard McGrath runs a stone mason business. He too has been raided a number of times in recent years. Just three weeks ago, he had an attempted break-in.
‘They didn’t get my tools this time but I have had all my tools stolen in the last two or three years or so.’
He said: ‘If you add it all up, it is about €15,000. We had two guys in here, asking stupid questions. They had been in with Sam earlier.
‘He sent me CCTV. I told the gardaí and they ran the plate and, at 10.30 that night, I got a call telling me they had found them in a car near my premises. This place is alarmed, boulders up at the gate, it doesn’t matter a damn. It’s impossible. The gardaí are going to all this trouble bringing these guys to court and then they walk away with small sentences.’
But he also blames people who buy cheap tools from stalls, not knowing where they came from. He said the gardaí are helpless because often the dealers have a receipt from the UK. ‘And when you ring the number, the person on the other side says: “Yeah, I sold him that.”’
‘When the thief sees me, he just waves in jest’ ‘Three minutes is all it took them’