{"id":133325,"date":"2025-11-11T03:43:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T03:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/133325\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T03:43:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T03:43:08","slug":"alleged-street-attack-on-boy-13-leads-to-fears-among-galways-bangladeshi-community-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/133325\/","title":{"rendered":"Alleged street attack on boy (13) leads to fears among Galway\u2019s Bangladeshi community \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Garda\u00ed are investigating an alleged attack on a 13-year old boy in Co Galway<\/a>. The incident, which the boy\u2019s friend was allegedly made to film using one of the attacker\u2019s phones, took place on or near Shop Street in Tuam on October 16th. <\/p>\n

The victim was born in Ireland<\/a> to Bangladeshi<\/a> parents. <\/p>\n

In the video, the boy, who is wearing school-uniform trousers and appears to have a schoolbag on his back, has his back to a wall. <\/p>\n

He is seen being taunted by two older males and told to take his hands away from his face, only to be repeatedly slapped. <\/p>\n

One of the other males then offers him a choice between fighting him and being punched. When he chooses not to fight, he is punched in the head and falls to the ground. He can be heard crying. <\/p>\n

In a statement, An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na<\/a> said it is investigating the matter. <\/p>\n

\u201cGarda\u00ed received report of an alleged assault in Tuam, Co Galway, which occurred on Thursday, October 16th, 2025,\u201d it said. \u201cFollowing inquiries, two male youths, aged in their teens, have been referred to the youth diversion programme. Investigations are ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Roche, a Fine Gael<\/a> TD for Galway East, said he had seen the video in the last fortnight and contacted the family of the boy, who he said owned two businesses in Tuam. <\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t leave it without contacting them and I met the family \u2013 the father and his son and wife,\u201c said Mr Roche. \u201cThe father told me the thugs had threatened the boy that they would burn down his house if he told anyone. So they didn\u2019t even know until they saw the video themselves. <\/p>\n

\u201cI met the family at their home. I spoke to the young fella and the impact this has had on him is just awful.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr Roche organised a meeting in the town last week, at which garda\u00ed addressed the area\u2019s small Bangladeshi community. It was attended by local councillors and Mr Roche\u2019s party colleague Hildegarde Naughton, Minister of State at the Department of Equality. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was huge fear among the Bangladeshi community that this attack was the start of something that could end up in someone getting really badly hurt or even killed,\u201d he said. \u201cI think they were really heartened by the level of support and reassurance that what happened in no way represents the vast majority of the decent people of Tuam.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garda\u00ed are investigating an alleged attack on a 13-year old boy in Co Galway. The incident, which the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-133325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}