A MOTHER and her four-year-old son may be offered counselling after they were kidnapped for a ransom in Northern Ireland, police said last night.
The mother and son were held for 12 hours at a vacant house in south Belfast after being abducted from their home in Killough, Co Down, on Wednesday. The woman’s partner, who works at a financial institution, was forced to go to work and hand over a sum of cash. Nobody was injured.
Det Supt Karen Baxter said: “We have a four-year-old child taken out in the early hours of yesterday morning by an organised criminal gang, prepared to do this for their own personal gain.
“No doubt they [mother and son] had a very horrific and horrendous experience.”
The woman managed to free herself from the house at the Ravenhill Road on Wednesday night, and although uninjured she and her son were left badly shaken, police said. The cash had been left in the greater Belfast area, and was collected.
Police appealed for anybody with information to come forward. “Their priority and their motive was self-gain; the family are trying to come to terms with what has been a very difficult ordeal and we are trying to support them.” Ms Baxter said the victims were doing quite well, despite being left terrified. “We will look at that and try and work that out with the family together.”
Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie said it was a carbon copy of the methods used by the IRA Northern Bank robbers in December 2004.