A child whose family home was petrol-bombed in a case of mistaken identity managed to run to safety and alert neighbours that her siblings and mother were trapped inside by the flames.
One neighbour who helped to rescue the family at Meakstown near Finglas, north Dublin, told The Irish Times he could see children looking down at him from an upstairs bedroom window as fire spread towards them.
“I thought because the [child] had run out of the house then I’d be able to go in,” said Emmanuel Bello (26) whose family home is near the property mistakenly targeted on Creston Avenue.
“But then I saw that fire spread. My mum was saying, ‘Don’t go inside, the fire’s really bad’. I was about to break down, to start crying, because you can’t just stand there and do nothing.
“We could see all the kids were gathered at the window. So we found whatever we could and we just started throwing it at the window. There was nothing else we could do.”
Once Mr Bello and neighbours from two other houses managed to smash the window they encouraged the children to jump, promising they would catch them.
“And then all the kids just start jumping down. There was panic, they didn’t have to think about it,” he said.
He said one of the first children to jump was too big to catch and suffered what appeared to be a head injury on landing on the ground.
Gardai at scene of the fire on Creston Avenue on New Year’s Eve. Photograph: Conor Ó Mearáin/Collins
“But with the rest of them we were able to catch them. At the end somebody threw a bed on the ground so the last person actually landed on the bed,” Mr Bello said.
Mr Bello said he had been relaxing at home at about 12.45am on New Year’s Eve when he “heard a bang and my sister screamed” that something was happening in the neighbours’ house.
He could see flames coming from the downstairs kitchen window and ran into the street to try to rescue those trapped.
Garda sources said the five people in the house were lucky to survive after arsonists threw a petrol bomb through the ground-floor kitchen window.
The investigation by An Garda Síochána is in its early stages, but officers believe a Dublin crime gang had set out to target a person living in the Creston area, off St Margaret’s Road, as part of a campaign of violence, but they got the wrong house.
All but one of the five occupants were initially rescued from the three-storey property.
Firefighters arrived and brought the flames under control. They went into the house and rescued the final person trapped, a woman in her 40s who is believed to be the mother of the children.
The occupants, the woman in her 40s, a woman in her 20s and three teenagers – two girls and a boy – were brought by ambulance to James Connolly Memorial and Temple Street Children’s hospitals.
The eldest woman and the boy were described as being in a serious condition after Wednesday morning’s attack.
Gardaí hope CCTV footage recorded by cameras at houses locally, including the targeted house, and nearby businesses has captured the attackers in the area.
They have also appealed for anyone who saw anything suspicious locally at the time to come forward.
Dublin Fire Brigade said six ambulances from Dublin Fire Brigade and the National Ambulance Service attended the scene.