THE MOTHER at the centre of yesterday’s dramatic car hijacking in Limerick city has spoken of her desperate attempts to save her youngest child after her car was stolen with the two-year-old boy inside.
The mother of six suffered the ordeal when her black Opel Zafira was stolen at the Centra Shop at Woodview Shopping Centre in Caherdavin.
The woman was on the school run and had left the keys in the ignition, and three of her children in the back of the car, with the child lock on, when she stopped off at the shop at about 9.25am.
The 11-year-old girl, 10-year-old boy and two-year-old toddler were sitting in the back of the car when a man armed with a screwdriver got into the car.
He shouted at the eldest boy who jumped out of the car via the front passenger door and then pushed a screwdriver into the girl’s back as she desperately tried to get her younger brother out of the back seat.
Speaking about the ordeal at her home in Limerick city yesterday, the 32-year-old mother – who did not wish to be identified – said she was at the check-out in the shop when her daughter came into the store shouting, “Mommy, Mommy, quick”.
The woman said she knew instantly “something serious had happened” and she made her way to the front door of the shop from where she saw her car being driven away with her youngest child still inside.
“I saw my other two kids but I didn’t see my small fellow and I knew that he was still in the car, trapped in the car. I was trying to make my way to the car and when I did it skidded off,” she recalled.
“I was just screaming and roaring for anyone to help, could anyone go after him because my child was in the back of the car. I was just thinking of every possible thing that probably a mother would think.
“I didn’t know what he was going to do. Was he going to beat the child up? Or was he going to crash in the car and would the child go out through the front window? There was just so many things running through my mind.”
An uncle of the little boy happened to be driving past at the time, bringing his own children to school, and the woman jumped into his car and they attempted to follow the stolen car. “I knew he went on straight but after that I didn’t know where he went, I was just there praying ‘God please show me which way did he go’,” she recalled.
“He turned off a kind of a side road near a pub so we went out there a bit and when I did, thank God and our Blessed Lady, my child was there standing on the side of the road . . . I was just so happy to see him and was hugging and kissing him and thanking God that he was in one piece,” she added.
The mother returned to her two other children who were being cared for by staff at Gleeson’s pharmacy in Woodview Shopping Centre. “I immediately rushed back to where I had left the other two kids off and when I went there they were just crying.
“The eldest one that was in the car was taking it very bad. She was telling me that she was sorry she was trying to get him out and she couldn’t get him out; she was doing her best but she thought it was all her fault.
“It was just heart-breaking to be quite honest. I don’t think there are words really to describe it until you go through it yourself,” she said.
Speaking about the ordeal at her home in Limerick city yesterday afternoon, the woman said her children were not saying much but her 11-year-old daughter was still recovering from having the screwdriver pushed into her back.
“She got pushed out of the car and hurt her knee. He pushed a screwdriver into her back. When she was trying to get the child out of the back he stuck the screwdriver into her,” the mother recalled.
The woman said she didn’t care about her car or where it was once her children were safe. “Once they were grand that meant the world to me. I didn’t really care about anything else to be quite honest,” she said.
“We were afraid he would do something bad to them, but thank God that they were okay and in the one piece, that was just my prayer answered.”
Yesterday’s events at Woodview Shopping centre on the north side of Limerick city shocked local residents.
Store manager John McCoy, who raised the alarm in the morning, said: “We know the lady from coming in and we are all very upset for her.”