Masked raiders beat OAP on the head with hammer, court hears

BURGLARS allegedly beat an elderly man about the head with a hammer before threatening to shoot him in the face so he could see it happening, the High Court heard yesterday.

The masked intruders also threatened to cut his wife’s ear off and scald her with boiling water unless they opened a safe at their home in Co Down, prosecutors claimed.

The attack, said to have been carried out in front of the couple’s son, resulted in £4,000 in cash and a set of commemorative George Best £5 notes being stolen.

Details emerged as bail was refused to one of three men accused of raiding the house on the Castlewellan Road, Ballyward on February 22.

Alan Stewart (31), of Knockburn Gardens in Lisburn, is allegedly linked by the blood of one victim found on his shoe.

Crown lawyer Laura Ievers claimed three masked men forced their way into the property and dragged a man in his sixties outside, where he was kicked and punched to the body and head before being struck a number of times with a hammer to the left side of his head.

The intruders, who demanded money from a safe, declared they were from a proscribed organisation, the court heard.

According to Ms Ievers, they became increasingly frustrated when the couple were unable to provide access to the vault. “One threatened to cut the elderly lady’s ear using scissors, holding the scissors to her throat and demanding to know where the safe was,” she said.

“He threatened to shoot the elderly male occupier to the back of the head, then said ‘I’m going to shoot you to the front of the head so you can see it’.”

At that point their son, aged in his thirties, agreed to hand over £1,000. But the gang allegedly persisted to see more cash amid further menacing actions.

Ms Ievers said forensic tests have found a match for the older male householder’s blood on Stewart’s footwear.

Defence counsel Richard McConkey agreed the alleged offences were “horrendous”. But he argued that Stewart should be released from custody due to delays in a case he predicted will not reach trial until next year.

Refusing bail, however, Mrs Justice Keegan said: “It seems to me there has been some proper work done, it’s a complicated case.”