IDIOT thugs who posed with weapons on a social network site, sparking a series of garda raids, are trying to reignite gang feuds in Sligo.
Last week the Sunday World revealed how the pic-tures led to gardai raids, culminating in the seizure of drugs and firearms. This week, locals have told how the young thugs are run-ning amok because they are trying to live up to the hard-man reputations of gangsters from the town. The young thugs, calling them-selves the 'Fort Hill Ultras' and 'Hill Boys Elite', are causing havoc on the northside of the city with residents saying they are afraid to walk out at night in the area. Murder In the Forthill area, a group of youngsters with connections to 2008 gangland murder victim David Lynch are the main instiga-tors of trouble.
Several of the young thugs are related to each other and are sus-pected of involvement in anti-social behaviour, including assaults, arson attacks, vandalism and intimidation. Other youngsters who have links to suspected mobster Hughie Irwin are also involved in trouble in Sligo. "They are at each other's throats. You have a younger gen-eration who think they must live up the reputations of those who went before them. They range in age from as young as 11 to about 17 or 18, with four or five key pro-tagonists," a local source said. One Forthill resident said peo-ple were fed up with the trouble. "It's total anarchy. We have fel-las standing on the top of derelict houses flinging slates down on to A boarded-up house in the Forthill area of Sligo cars driving by. We've had break-ins,senior citizens threatened with knives, houses burnt out. "
Last week there was a riot between the two groups on Forthill. These thugs were throw-ing stuff and calling the guards abusive names. They told one gar-da they would rape her when she went to speak to them. "A disabled boy was walking over the hill last week and by the time those boys were finished with him he needed 18 stitches. There was a youth club running in the area which had to be closed down. These thugs were standing at the window exposing them-selves to five and six-year-olds." Sources say they believe the youngsters linked to Lynch are supplied drugs by a Sligo-based traveller criminal.
Another source said rival gang-sters linked to Hughie Irwin were driving around Forthill last week throwing golf balls at windows trying to intimidate people. The gang linked to Irwin are believed to have carried out the murders of traveller criminal Hughie McGinley in 2005 and armed robber David Lynch in 2008. Irwin bases himself in Lanzarote, but he is understood to return to Sligo on occasion. Gardai are set to bring charges against a number of people fol-lowing the raids two weeks ago. They uploaded pictures to Facebook of themselves in masks holding weapons including a shot-gun, axes and crossbows. However, the pictures identified what houses they were taken in and one youngsters used his own phone to upload the pictures.
As a result gardai carried out raids and seized drugs with a street value of €50,000 and sever-al weapons. Gardai are expecting to bring charges shortly. A source said: "The people who own the drugs will also realise it was directly because of these pic-tures that the drugs were seized. That was a costly mistake." History Local Labour Councillor Veronica Cawley said: "I would appeal for calm and for people to sit down and try to deal with this issue.We're in big fear here of his-tory repeating itself." She added that a lack of commu-nity facilities is leading to anti-social behaviour.
However, Sinn Fein Councillor Arthur Gibbons said some of the thugs have no intention of using any facilities provided. "There is a whole big sporting facility with three different foot-ball pitches. Youths went up there a couple of weeks ago and nearly took the roof off the place. "Politicians think they can bury their heads in the sand and this is going to go away, but it's not. We're going to hand over this country to the criminals and once we lose this country we're not going to get it back."
