Stone throwers cause terror

ELDERLY residents living in a quiet area of Limavady have been left terrified after stone throwing vandals launched rocks and missiles at their homes during the weekend.

The thugs broke into a construction site behind homes in the Meadowvale Park area of the town on Sunday and wreaked havoc by damaging machinery and throwing large rocks from the top of a large soil mound onto roofs of nearby homes. There have now been calls for security to be stepped up at the building site until construction work is finished. 63-year-old Lawrence Smyth, a resident who has lived in the Meadowvale Park area for over 20 years, says his house was one of those targeted.

Lawrence told the Sentinel:"My fear is that someone is going to be hit by one of these rocks. The people living here are in immediate danger and the height that these stones are being thrown from from means that someone could have been easily hurt on Sunday or worse.

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Mr Smyth continued: "The rocks found in my next door neighbours garden bounced off his roof and narrowly missed his windows. My other neighbour counted four stones on top of her conservatory."

Another resident, who says he has been left fearful since the vandals struck, says he heard a number of heavy bangs from his roof on Sunday before discovering the large rocks in his garden.

"I had no idea what the noise was and when I went outside to look up at the roof I saw a large stone lying in my garden. I looked over to my neighbours roof and could see stones sitting there."

"We have never had trouble like this before and it's got to the stage where we are sitting on edge in our own homes waiting for a window to be smashed. There are bricks and other bits of debris sitting right beside that muck hill is, how do we know something like that won't be launched next?"

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The residents say some small pieces of clay, believed to be coming from the man-made soil mound, had been found in their gardens prior to the last weekend's attack.

DUP Councillor Alan Robinson and UUC Councillor Leslie Cubitt have now called for action to be taken on preventing the incident from happening again.

Councillor Robinson told the Sentinel: "I have spoken to the director of the construction company in question and have made him aware of the situation. I would ask the developer to secure this site to prevent youths from entering.

"There also needs to be action taken on this large mound, which at the very least needs to levelled off as it presents a number of health and safety dangers which need to be limited immediately."

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UUC Councillor Leslie Cubitt said he sympathized with the residents affected.

"I was contacted this morning by residents in the Meadowvale Park area about the situation. These people should not have to be scared in their own homes. I back Councillor Robinson's call for security at the site before any more damage is done to residents home. I also intended to bring this issue up with the council to see what can be done to prevent this from happening again."

Nick Brown, director of McCloskey and O'Kane, developer of the construction site in which the incident is said to have taken place, said the company would be reviewing the building site's security.

Mr Brown said: "The site in question was broken into at the weekend where machinery was damaged and vandalised. We are currently reviewing the security of this large site. We were only made aware of the incident concerning the residents of Meadowvale Park this morning and this incident will also be taken into account when we are looking at the site's security."

A PSNI spokeswoman confirmed that a report of youths throwing stones onto the roofs of houses in the Meadowvale Park area had been made.

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