Pensioner feared he would be killed during violent robbery

A pensioner, tied up and assaulted by two men armed with knives and a sword, said he thought he was going to die.

Willie Creed and his two sisters were left severely traumatised after the men broke into the house at Ballyluddy, Pallasgreen, Co Limerick, last Thursday night.

“The very minute I opened the bedroom door, they were right on top of me and knocked me to the floor. They had two butchers knives — the ones with the 12-inch long blades. Both of them had them [knives] in their hands, and they had two pointed sticks [makeshift swords], about a foot long, which pointed out. They gave me a belt of one of them down on the head and they had the two sisters beat up and tied up. They tied me up as well.”

Willie, 74, Nora, 72, and Chrissie, 66, were dragged from room to room as the raiders searched for cash.

“We were all tied up and they belted Nora and Chrissie with a small stool, straight down they hit them. Nora got a belt in the back of the head. We were panned out. I have an irregular heartbeat and I could feel the pulse going up, and there was the bleeding, and we weren’t able to do nothing.

“Chrissie had €5 in a note and some change in her purse, that’s all she had after the week so, they took the €5 note and threw the change onto the floor. They dragged us into my bedroom and tied us to the leg of the bedroom table. They locked the door and they went around the house searching.”

The ordeal lasted over two hours.

Willie said they were left for dead in his bedroom.

“They told Nora they were going to take me and I’d never be back. It did run into my head that we’d bleed to death [in the room]. I definitely thought they’d murder us.

“Eventually I opened the door of the room with a screwdriver. Luckily enough they were gone. Otherwise we would have bled to death. They was pools of blood on the floor and up on the press and on Nora’s boots.”

Once freed by Willie, Nora phoned her brother Tommy, who lives nearby, to come to the house.

“Nora had a phone downstairs and she rang up Tommy and he came up with a hatchet in his hands. Tommy, being the hurler in the family, he would have KO’d them.”

A man was in custody in Bruff Garda Station last night after an early morning garda raid as part of the investigation into the brutal attack.

The man, 27, was arrested in Monard. A garda source described the arrest as “a significant development” in the investigation.