A Drogheda family, whose son owed a drug debt to a gang involved in a feud, were so fearful they took it in turns to stay awake for fear of being murdered in their beds.
The distraught family also set up an electric tripwire and boarded up all their windows and installed a trench deep filled with pieces of board studded with nails due to the fear they were in.
They also installed sheets of marine plywood nailed over the windows at night as protection against petrol or pipe bombs.
READ MORE: Drogheda feud fears as paralysed mob boss's associate taunted on streets
The Co Louth family were so distraught they had not slept for weeks and were “exhausted with fear and anxiety.”
The starting revelations of what one family went through due to drug intimidation during the height of the town’s deadly feud are revealed in a new book by retired Chief Superintendent of Drogheda Christy Mangan.
The top cop recalled in his ‘Cracking the Case - Inside the Mind of a Top Cop’ published by Penguin House, that “having served almost four decades in An Garda Siochana, it takes a lot to shock me but this family and their plight had an enormous impact on me.”
The retired cop - who headed the investigation into the horror murder and dismemberment of 17-year-old Keane Mulready-Woods in January 2020 -said he met with th this family to devise a plan.
He said the family’s son’s cocaine debt was just €300 but this escalated to over €3,000.
“The criminals began to phone him, demanding money. At the beginning only the son was threatened,” recalled Mr Mangan in his book.
“Then his family began to receive intimidating phone calls. Finally, the criminals started to turn up at the home, threatening violence.”
Because of the family’s fear for their lives, they installed the measures of an electric wire, activated at night, running about an inch above the perimeter of the wall of the house to give the criminals a shock if they tried to get over the wall.
If they succeeded in bypassing the wire, they were met with the trench filled nail-laiden timber, Mr Mangan recalled.
In a bid to help protect the family, Mr Mangan said he decided to “do something that is not recommended in any police training manual - to station several heavily armed garda in the house at night.”
He said he also deployed armed gardai in the area and quickly succeeded in arresting and charging the criminals before they could do any serious damage to the family or their house.
However, he recalled “when planning and executing these types of operations you’re potentially dealing with the most violent of criminals.”
“Yet,” he wrote, “When you confront them with force greater than their own and they are lying handcuffed with their faces on the ground, these criminals become quivering, crying, babbling wrecks.
“It never ceases to amaze me,” he wrote.
The feud, which started in 2018 and escalated when mob boss Owen Maguire was shot and left paralysed in a botched murder attempt, has already claimed four lives, including that of teen Keane, who was murdered and dismembered by slain serial killer Robbie Lawlor.
As well as four murders, the feud has already seen over 100 serious criminal incidents of petrol bombs, serious assaults and kidnappings.
The deadly feud in the Co Louth town has quieted down since mid 2020 but there have been a number of incidents since then.
“The feud is still simmering away and has not gone away despite a number of key players either in prison, dead or have fled overseas,” a source told this paper.
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