Editorial: Dismantling the drug business that is preying on our communities
Flowers and tributes at the house in Birchwood Estate where Philip, Kim, Callum and Jayden English lost their lives on Tuesday, October 13. Photo: Joe Evans
The horror of Tuesday morning, which saw Waterford wake up to the deaths of four people – a mother, a father and a 12 and nine-year-old boy, as well as two more children being treated for horrific burn injuries in hospital, has catapulted the scourge that is drug and drug debt-related intimidation into the top of the news agenda.
But it is not a new story, nor is it new that Waterford children are collateral. Over a decade ago 11-year-old Roisin Halligan jumped in front of her baby cousin Lexi when, in broad daylight, a petrol bomb was thrown through the sitting room window of their grandmother’s Ardmore Park house. Roisin suffered life-changing burn injuries as a result.
In Waterford, stories of cars being burned out feature regularly in the pages of the Waterford News & Star. The English family were just one target.
We are aware of Philip and Kim English’s car being destroyed with paint in 2023. We are aware of Philip’s former wife Anne being targeted in May this year – she moved in with Kim and Philip for eight weeks as a result of a petrol bomb attack.
In September Philip and Kim’s car was burned out in another petrol bomb attack. They had only replaced that vehicle when the horror of the early hours of Tuesday morning, October 13 occurred.
Some will say that the deaths of four people was not the intention. That is absurd talk. A petrol bomb was thrown at a house in the dark, early morning hours as children slept inside. The white coffins that were brought into the Sacred Heart Church at the Folly on Sunday carried the remains of children who were targeted in the most despicable way.
Those who have blood on their hands go far beyond the hand that threw the petrol bomb. They must all be brought to justice.
It is an open secret in Waterford that a network of individuals is fuelling and then feeding off drug addiction and dealing. Its modus operandi is to play upon people’s vulnerabilities, and, frighteningly, with increasing regularity, children’s vulnerabilities.
It is a grotesque ‘business’ model that has at its heart the destruction of Waterford’s oldest communities, families and friends torn apart as individuals are incorporated into the dark workings towards drug profit.
On Tuesday it was Birchwood estate.
Greed is eating at the heart of our communities – communities that work so hard to break out of those chains, to build our young people up for a brighter future.
And it is not the sole preserve of lower socio-economic areas anymore. Its tentacles have spread across urban and rural, across social divides.
Callum English playing soccer for Johnville FC on a weekend morning, the joy in his eyes at scoring a goal, at seeing his teammates’ pride. The fist pump of victory, the satisfaction of achievement.
This is the future all of Waterford must fight for, for all our children, that they can carry forward.
Drug addiction, drug dealing – it happens in the shadows, but it is rife across our communities, in our schools, our clubs, among adults of all social spheres.
Our judicial and law enforcement must be fully and adequately resourced, or the vicious claws of those profiting will only grow sharper, their clutch deeper, and more will be lost. Whether to the brutal violence of the petrol bomb, or the quiet, deadly violence of a business built on addiction and intimidation that does not care for its victims.
