‘truly shocking’ | 

Witness describes ‘disturbing’ scenes following attempted child abduction in Dublin

“I had just come back from work and went outside for a smoke when I heard somebody screaming for help,” she said.

Today at 19:36

A woman who witnessed the aftermath of an attempted abduction of a two-year-old girl has described the “disturbing” scenes.

The incident happened today around noon in the Sheriff St area of Dublin’s north inner city.

It is understood the man, who is his late 20s, tried to remove the child from a pram on the street.

The witness, who did not want to be named, said she heard screaming across the road on Sheriff Street that alerted her to the fact something was wrong.

“I had just come back from work and went outside for a smoke when I heard somebody screaming for help,” she said.

“It was a girl, I know her, she’s actually the same age as me and I ran over to her. She was shouting, ‘ah, that man, he’s after trying to take my baby, help, help’.

“I know the lady, she’s in her 20s,” she explained.

“She lives across the road from me and on Sheriff Street you have these little gardens. She had just put her bags in the door and turned around and your man was leading (the child) out by the hand.”

The witness also described how a woman went after the man “with a sweeping brush and actually cracked him over the head with it.”

The witness said the mother “was banging on her neighbour’s door and window but there was nobody there, that’s when I ran over.”

“One of my friends came around the corner and he stopped the man. But there was something wrong with him. He was shouting, ‘someday you’ll all understand why I wanted to take that child’. He was laughing and saying, ‘hit me harder’, it was very, very disturbing to see.”

A man is being quizzed by gardaí following the incident that occurred shortly after midday close to the North Wall Women’s Centre.

Gardaí said officers from Store Street responded to an incident in the Sheriff Street area of Dublin 1 shortly after 12 noon.

“A man, aged in his late 20s, was arrested at the scene for an alleged offence under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997,” gardaí said.

“(He) is currently detained at a garda station in the Dublin Region under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984.”

The suspect is known to gardaí for public order incidents in the north inner city.

They added: “An Garda Síochána is currently investigating and verifying the details of this incident.”

Local Cllr Nial Ring said he had been talking to people in Sheriff Street where locals came to the rescue of a child, “who was taken from a pram when the mother went back into her house to get something”.

“A local man saw the incident and a few locals then confronted the abductor,” Cllr Ring said.

“Gardaí were on the scene in minutes.”

He added: “This is every parent’s worst nightmare. But thanks to the vigilance of the local people there, something horrendous was prevented.”

Mark Fay, who is a local area representative for the Sheriff Street area, described the incident as “truly shocking”.