Four escape house fire amid concern that hired thugs are behind arson attacks

FOUR people were hospitalised in the early hours of Thursday morning last after their house in Castle Park was set on fire in a vicious arson attack.

A gang of three men is suspected of having been involved in the arson attack with the front window and door of the house being smashed before the front room was doused with an accelerant – probably petrol – and set alight.

The four people in the house, a mother and her three children – two of them adults and one juvenile – were asleep in the upstairs bedrooms when the attack occurred.

They managed to escape via a lower shed roof located at the back area of the house before the emergency services arrived at the scene including the fire brigade, Gardaí and ambulances.

The incident occurred just before 2am and in a follow-up operation shortly after the incident, Gardaí followed a car out the Dublin Road; stopped it; and subsequently arrested three men.

All three from the greater Dublin area were questioned yesterday at the Garda Regional HQ in Murrough under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act – two of the suspects are understood to be in their 20s and one of them is a juvenile.

The four occupants of the house were taken by ambulance to University Hospital Galway where they were treated yesterday for possible smoke inhalation – their conditions are understood to be non-life threatening.

The Galway City Tribune has learned that Gardaí are getting increasingly concerned that this latest arson attack is part of a ‘second feud’ that has developed between two groups in the West of Ireland – one of them city based – over recent weeks and months.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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