Death drivers target Travellers

Two attacks by death drivers on the Travelling community at the Windy Gap site on the Monagh Bypass in West Belfast have been descibed as racist.

In the early hours of Wednesday 20 October, three youths in a silver car deliberately rammed into a caravan. The car, thought to be stolen, gouged a large hole in the side of the mobile home. The culprits then made their escape along the Monagh Bypass.

In a second incident the next afternoon, a second mobile home, belonging to Bridget Mongan, was damaged when a car skidded through the stone bollards at the entrance to the site and smashed into it.

Mongan and her 15-month-old son Gary escaped serious injury during the racist attack. She says she has been too afraid to sleep in the mobile home at night since. "We've had to sleep in other people's caravans since it happened. I don't want to go back in there."

Travellers' spokesperson Michael Mongan said these incidents are frequent but his community rarely reports them because little is ever done to find the culprits.

"In any other corner of the city this would be called a racist attack but because it is here nothing is done," he said, adding that it will be only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or killed.