A WOMAN was left shaken after a man entered her yard late at night and attacked the family dog which was in its pen at the time.
The man was one of a group of adult males and children who gathered in a field behind her house in a rural part of south Wexford at around 11.30 p.m. on Thursday night.
The incident occurred in the vicinity of Ramsgrange and when the woman spoke to the Echo about it she said she had just put her two young children to bed when the ordeal began.
“I was in the house on my own with our two kids,” said the woman, who preferred to remain unidentified.
“We had been up looking at a film and then I put them to bed at around 11.30 p.m.,” she added.
When the woman went upstairs she heard the family pet barking out the back which was unusual.
“I could hear the dog going mad and she’s half blind so it was a bit strange,” she said.
“I opened the velux window and I saw man with a very big lamp out in the field and there were others with him and children.”
The woman could hear the gang banging against the fence at the back yard and she shouted at them to stop.
“The next thing the dog squealed and the guy in the field shone the lamp over to the pen and then I could see there was actually another guy in there and he seemed to be hitting the dog,” she said.
She then heard one of the men in the field shout ‘c’mon lads, c’mon’, and they ran away.
The woman said the dog was terrified by the ordeal and was limping the next day.
“It looked like the man hit her on her forefront,” she said.
“She was limping and she was very distressed,” she added.
The woman said she herself was shaken by what happened and didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
Ironically, it was one of the rare occasions when her husband, who is 6’5” and a black-belt martial arts expert, wasn’t at home.
“I rang the Gardai and some neighbours and I have to say they were brilliant,” the woman told the Echo.
“It seems they were either staking out the house under the pretence of lamping or might have also been seeing what type of dog it was to possibly take her,” she said.
According to the woman the lamp the men had “was huge” and even though the man holding it was at the far side of the adjacent field it lit up the back yard of the house.
“It lit up my back garden even though he was at the other side of the field,” she said.
She said there were four or five men in the group along with around four children.
“They also had small dogs with them as well and that was a worry because we have pet rabbits so what would they have done to them if they got in,” she said.
The couple have been living in the area for over a decade and have never had an issue before but she admitted the incident left her shaken: “It was a very scary experience when I was here alone at night on my own with two small children.”
She also got a shock to discover other people in the area had similar experiences where groups of men with lights were seen in fields adjacent to houses late at night.
“The Gardai were very quick to arrive and they were brilliant, as were our neighbours who were also quick to arrive,” she said.
If anyone saw a group of men with children acting suspiciously in the vicinity of Ramsgrange late on Thursday night they are asked to contact New Ross Garda Station on 051-421204.
