Rampaging thugs burn house to the ground
RESIDENTS are living in fear after a house was burnt to the ground by a gang of thugs who went on the rampage outside Ballyduff village in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Locals, including a number of elderly people who live alone, are terrified following the havoc in the Kilmore area at the weekend, which culminated with a vacant house, owned by former Ballyduff hurling manager Jerry Wallis, being burnt to the ground.
The late-night mayhem was the latest episode in a number of similar incidents in the area in the past two weeks. A vacant holiday home was broken into early in the New Year and upwards of €10,000 worth of damage was caused as thugs smashed everything they could lay their hands on.
This weekend’s appalling vandalism saw the gang damaging a hot-rod car in one home, uprooting garden lights in another, throwing a rock through the windows of one house and stealing a fire extinguisher from another before setting it off all over the outside walls of that home. None of the houses was occupied at the time.
The Wallis family are this week reeling from the destruction of their Kilmore home. “We’re absolutely devastated and it’s a terrible start to the New Year for us. Thankfully there was no one in the house at the time, but it is shocking to think that something like this could happen to us,” Mr Wallis — who brought Ballyduff to hurling glory with a county title once again last year — said.
“It’s the latest in a number of incidents on our area and to be honest we’re living in fear,” one local resident who didn’t wish to be named said. “This crowd are out of control and it’s bad enough here with the boy racers driving down by night to the beach. There’s a number of old people living here alone and they are in real fear at the moment. We’re thinking of getting an Alsatian now to protect our home it’s so bad.”
Gardaí are appealing for any information in relation to the episode and have carried out house- to- house enquiries in Ballyduff as well as conducting a forensic examination of the road on which the vandalism occured.
“We have spoken to a number of locals in relation to these incidents and are taking the matter extremely seriously,” a spokesperson for gardaí in Listowel said.