"FASTING". The medical information attached to Jason O'Connor's hospital bed yesterday gave a fairly good prognosis. He had had nine stitches to his head and wash due for an operation on his leg. If it had not been for a neighbour, he thinks, he could have been dead.
Jason O'Connor (21), from of admits that he has used heroin, and that his habit costs £30 to £50 a day. He was only a month out of prison after his "fourth or fifth" stint for robbery when he was beaten up with baseball bats outside his home in the early hours of yesterday morning. He is not a dealer, he says.
One of a family of five, his father is no longer alive. His mother and 18 year old sister were at home in the Glenshane area of Tallaght when he went down to the kitchen and turned on the light to get a drink of water.
"Then I went out on my push bike. I was going round to my mates. I saw five men with ballys (balaclavas) running towards me, I hopped off the bike and legged it.
He ran back towards home, passed the door and was a couple of houses up when he slipped and fell.
"They started beating me up. There was no one around. Yeah, I was yelling. Then a man came out and shouted at them to leave him alone, leave him alone.
"But before that, I had pulled the bally off one of them, and I know him."
This man had given him a verbal warning a week ago, Mr O'Connor says. "It was the viggies," he attests. The group of five men were "old, about 40 to 45."
"I was knocked out nearly, I was going blind. They kept hitting me on the head. If it wasn't for that man who came out, they'd have kept on."
He was taken by ambulance to hospital and was interviewed by gardai at about 4 a.m.
Condemning the attack, which occurred 10 days after the death of Mr Josie Dwyer in an assault in the south inner city, Democratic Left TD Mr Eric Byrne called for community policing councils to be established in vulnerable estates and flat complexes.
There is "a world of difference, between vigilantism and vigilance Mr Byrne said instatement. Such councils would facilitate co-operation between communities and gardai, and would ensure that the determination of local residents to rid their areas of drugs was diverted into lawful channels, he said.
A man held for questioning by gardai in Tallaght yesterday morning over the attack on Mr O'Connor was released without charge.
The Glenshane Drug Awareness Committee issued a "wholehearted" condemnation last night of "an act of violence" towards a member of its community. No member of the committee, or persons acting on its behalf, had any hand, act or part in the incident, Mr Joe Rossa of the committee said.
He added that to date 15 addicts in the area had signed up for treatment at the committee's new drug rehabilitation centre, which opens in July.
