Six youths in dumper joyride on school site

A group of Limerick youths left a trail of destruction during a joyriding escapade with a dumper.

The six, all aged 14 and 15, were questioned by gardaí in Roxboro yesterday about the incident, which resulted in tens of thousands of euro worth of damage.

They entered the grounds of Galvone school, which Finance Minister Michael Noonan turned the sod on this month, at around 8pm on Wednesday. They started a dumper that had been locked up on a building site within the school grounds.

They drove it through the site, smashing into structures and damaging six portable buildings along with machinery and equipment.

Gardaí were on the scene within minutes and caught two of the youths after a chase. Four others were questioned yesterday.

A Garda spokesman at Roxboro said the damage may come to over €60,000. “The dumper seemed to have been driven [in a] crazy fashion and luckily nobody was killed or injured.”

Meanwhile, a loud radio is believed to have sparked a petrol bomb attack yesterday in which a house in Lee Estate on the northside of the city was badly damaged.

Two men living in the house escaped uninjured in the attack, carried out at around 12.30am.

Tensions arose out of an incident last weekend when a mother was verbally abused after complaining about a loud radio late at night. This was followed by a number of incidents, one of which saw a man sever an artery when he kicked in the glass door of a house.