Halloween horrors as garda injured
by Ann Casey Updated: Wednesday, 4th November, 2009 5:09pm
A garda was injured by an exploding firework following a night of Halloween violence in Kells at the weekend, while in Castletown, a local public house had to close its door following a week of torment which came to a climax on Saturday night.
The incident involving the female garda took the Headfort Grove area on Saturday night when she suffered an eye injury when a firework exploded on a patrol car windscreen.
The patrol car was in the area in relation to an incident elsewhere in the town earlier that night. A crowd had gathered around the patrol car and were being verbally abusive when somebody threw a banger over the heads of the crowd at the windscreen.
The banger got stuck in a wiper and exploded showering the occupants of the car with glass, some of which hit the injured garda's eye. She is currently undergoing treatment for the eye injury. Nobody else was injured in the incident.
Earlier that same night, fire brigade personnel were subjected to stone throwing at a large bonfire at the entrance to Magdalene Court. According to a spokesman for the local fire brigade, those involved in the incident were not from the area. The fire brigade were on standby because of fears that overhead power lines were under threat.
"We did not try to put out the fire. We were just on standby for safety reasons," said a spokesman. A small section of the crowd threw stones at the firemen, but nobody was injured in the incident.
A spate of incidents in which a North Meath publican had to close his front door after the pub came under attack from youths throwing fireworks and eggs and the destruction of letters in a postbox marred Halloween celebrations in the village of Castletown.
In another incident in the same area, youths standing on a railway bridge aimed fireworks at cars on the Ardee-Kells Road near the junction of the Navan-Kingscourt Road.
Publican Pat Finn said that he did not want to give Castletown a bad name but the "carry-on" made the situation "unacceptable to us".
Mr Finn said that the letting off of fireworks had gone on in the village throughout last week "but what took place on Saturday night was very bad".
He said that heavy fireworks were continually thrown into the front hall of the pub, upsetting customers. "It was pretty aggressive", he said and led to the front door of the pub being closed to protect people inside.
The publican said that "young fellows in cars came into the village and drove around giving out the fireworks". They were "heavy duty" fireworks and in some cases had up to six cartridges in one firework. Other fireworks contained ball bearings. There were up to 13 youths involved at one stage, he said.
Gardai had to be called to the village and drove around but no arrests were made.
Mr Finn said that he knew similar incidents had gone on elsewhere but it did not make it any easier for the people of Castletown who had to put up with the behaviour. Eggs were also thrown at the pub walls and a special machine had to be hired to clean up the mess the next day, he said.
Soft drinks and tomato sauce was poured into the local postbox, destroying mail inside.
"It's very bad to see this kind of thing going on. There's supposed to be a recession on but from what I could see there was thousands of euros worth of fireworks on display in Castletown over the last week or so", he said.
Meanwhile, a Polish man living in Navan appeared in Blanchardstown District Court on Monday charged in relation to a stabbing incident in the town at the weekend. Lukas Zukowski (26), with an address at Distillery Quay, Flower Hill, Navan, was charged with assaulting Wojcieck Filipkowski, causing him harm, at Mill Lane, Navan, on 1st November. He was remanded in custody with consent to bail seat at €10,000 cash to appear at Cloverhill District Court today (Wednesday).
In Trim, gardai reported six public order arrests and two arrests for possession of knives on Saturday night.
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