Republican News · Thursday 10 January 2002

That's my mummy's house

BY LAURA FRIEL

The news bulletin showed film footage of a devastated front living room of yet another Belfast family home attacked by loyalists - now entering their third year of a sustained anti-Catholic campaign of violence.

The device, a piece of scaffolding pipe packed with shrapnel and explosives, smashed through the front window, ploughed through the carpet and floor boards and blasted a metre-square hole in the middle of the room.

The ferocity of the blast blew out all the glass in the windows and demolished furniture. Shards of metal were propelled into the ceiling and walls, bringing fistfuls of plaster down. Shrapnel ripped through an armchair.

"That's my mummy's house," confided six-year-old Nicole, watching the television in her uncle's home the day after the attack.

Patricia and four of her six children were upstairs when a loyalist gang threw a bomb through the downstairs window of the family's Manor Street home. It was shortly before 10pm and just three days into the New Year.

Twenty minutes earlier, the family had been watching a film together. During the Christmas holiday there had been no particular rush to put the children to bed. Nine-year-old Jonathon was watching 'Men in Black' with his mother. His two younger sisters, Nicole and four-year-old Christine were playing with baby Sean (15 months).

"The film finished about 9.30pm and shortly after that I gathered the children together and took them upstairs to bed," says Patricia. In the front bedroom Patricia lay down beside her youngest two children as she settled them down to sleep. The two elder children were in bed in a back bedroom.

"I heard a loud bang, an explosion, but at first I thought the noise was outside in the street," says Patricia. I grabbed the two children sleeping beside me and ran into the back room. And then Jonathon said he smelt smoke."

In the next few desperate minutes Patricia faced a dilemma. If the house was on fire every second lost in getting the children out increased the risk to their lives. But if the house was under attack by loyalists, to leave the house might pose the greater risk.

"I didn't know what to do," says Patricia, "I could hear someone banging on the front door. I thought loyalists were trying to get in."

Outside, Patricia's neighbours desperately tried to raise the alarm. Eventually, Patricia heard a familiar voice and carrying Christina and Sean in her arms, made her way downstairs to open the front door.

"There was smoke in the stairway," says Patricia. "I carried the youngest two and Jonathon grabbed his younger sister and carried her out." Jonathon, dressed in his pyjamas and bare-foot, cut his feet on shattered glass as he made his way out.

"I'm so thankful, my neighbours were just wonderful," says Patricia. "One neighbour took the children into her home and settled them down. I'm so grateful for all their help and support."

The house on Manor Street is now boarded up and empty. The family are staying with relatives until they can be rehoused. "I can't help thinking about what might have happened," says Patricia. "I've lost my home but I could have lost my family."