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They kicked him till he was down, and then some more

I lived 20 years in South Africa, one of the most violent countries on Earth, and never saw a single street fight.

I have lived 1 year in Ireland and seen two people have their heads kicked in on the street.

Tonight I walked past a man beaten till he was unconcious. I watched his head get wedged under a car tire, his torso pushed under a bumper by the force of the kicks. He went limp as two men kicked him. He was corpulent and it took many kicks to move him. They kicked him, he got to his knees and they kicked him back down.

This was in the center of Waterford, the 3rd biggest city in Ireland. The victim was Lithuanian and the attackers Russian. My girlfriend, Irish, tried to intervene and the Russians, herding her away, simply told her that the Lithuanian hadn’t paid his dues. They mentioned 20 thousand Euro and 60 thousand Euro. While one Russian was talking to her I saw the unconcious man stagger to his feet, walk around the corner and then pull a knife on two other Russians following him. They beat him back to the ground. He got up again and walked down to the quays and around a corner.

My only concern was getting my girlfriend and another friend back to our apartment just a few hundred meters away. Tomorrow we will report it. Hopefully the growing statistics on foreign-national crime will kick start the Gardae (Irish police) into cracking down on them. Till then I can only think of moving out of the city center. I don’t want to run away but there is no chance I or the few others in the area can stand up to this. These are hardened thugs from eastern Europe, they won’t think twice about silencing a few people.

A strange night really. Earlier our friend’s jacket had been stolen from Muldoons (a pub) while my girlfriends coat was close to being stolen. She had to grab the coat back from a young woman who was walking out the door. Only a few minutes later did we realise she had taken the other friend’s jacket.

It is horrible that I get to experience this in Ireland. It is sad to see the difference between poverty driven crime as we have back home in South Africa and this greedy, brutal and organised crime I see in Ireland. I have no sympathy here, there is no excuse for it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 28th, 2006 at 2:08 am and is filed under AAA, Ireland, Lithuanian, Russian, South Africa, beat, beating, crime, street, violence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    You've not seen crime in South Africa, wow you're one of the lucky ones then. I've witnessed a gang style execution of 6 youths (street corner just before cape town waterfront), actually seen someone shot in front of me (IN cape town waterfront infront of the Edgars i was not 10 meter away) been mugged twice myself and had 4 of my friends shot in the back of their heads while lying on the ground just so someone can enjoy a 3 hour joy ride in a new BMW then abandon it in Jhb and much more.

    What you describe, while completely vile and unacceptible, has nothing on whats going on in South Africa.
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    Paul, I have to say that I am horrified yet not shocked that you witnessed such an event in Waterford. These kind of events are on the up and are spread across all facets of society in Ireland. Everything from the youth of the city to problems amidst the migrant community, it's ever worsening. Sadly the theme of the degeneration is much like a comic book crime caper, "where law was a dirty word". The Gardaí seem powerless to intervene and the level of violence, intimidation, and mindless vandalism is escalating by the week. It saddens me to think that my homeland is becoming less of place than I wish to call home...

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