A 16-year-old male, his grandmother and a teenage friend were recovering in hospital yesterday after an early-morning shooting incident in Athy, Co Kildare.
The boy, named locally as Damien Whelan, was said to have lost the sight of his right eye after being shot in the chest and face by a neighbour at Castlepark estate on the outskirts of the town.
Gardai who arrived on the scene at 1.40 a.m. had to break up a crowd of more than 100 people who had gathered outside a house and were taunting the gunman, who was inside, and throwing stones at the house. The gunman had to be escorted from the area by up to 20 gardai.
It is understood the incident started at around 1.20 a.m. when the man was heard banging on the door of a neighbour, Ms Lilly Hyland. "He was shouting all sorts of things outside and I told him I was ringing the police," said Ms Hyland, who had returned a few hours earlier from a holiday.
She said there had been some tension between the two after she had reported him to gardai three weeks earlier when he allegedly broke a window of her house. "I was afraid even to turn on the lights. I just locked the doors and stayed away from the windows."
After returning to her upstairs bedroom, she said, the first shots come through the window above her. "I dived to the floor to take shelter with my son beside me."
Pellet holes could be seen peppered across the ceiling of her room yesterday with broken glass on the bed clothes and across the floor.
As the gunman turned his attention to neighbours who had gathered, Ms Hyland said she fled through the front door and down the street.
"It was terrifying," she said. "I could hear him going up and down the stairs beside us and I was afraid he might try to shoot through the walls."
Neither she nor her son, Christopher, was injured in the incident. However, four others were.
Ms Mary Whelan, a grandmother of the teenager who was shot in the eye, was struck with pellets in the neck, back and arm. She was hit after emerging from her house to see where the shots were coming from. She was treated yesterday in Naas General Hospital before being transferred to Tallaght Hospital in Dublin.
Her grandson was taken to the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital where he was said to be comfortable. A 16-year-old friend of the boy was also taken to hospital with pellet wounds. His father was grazed by pellets in the leg and arm but did not require hospital treatment.
The gardai who arrived at the scene were unable to bring the situation immediately under control and reinforcements had to be called. It is understood that the gunman's sister, who lives nearby, tried to persuade him to leave his house, but he was afraid to do so.
The man, who belongs to a local gun club and has a licence for a weapon, had been sheltering in his house with six children, all of whom were under the age of 10. As well as firing the nine shots, the man was reported to have thrown paint over the car of a neighbour who tried to intervene in the early stages of the incident.
In the melee which followed, the windows of a Garda car were smashed as well as those of a neighbouring house to the gunman's.
Garda reinforcements arrived at about 2.30 a.m. However, it took a further hour before the gunman was arrested and taken from his house.
