Two are arrested over Waterford petrol bomb murders as family reveal four died over someone ELSE'S 'drug debt'
A house on Birchwood Avenue in Waterford City, where a suspected petrol bomb attack in the early hours of Tuesday killed a man, a woman and two of their children.Kim English, one of four family members killed when a drug gang firebombed their Waterford home, had begged the council for a transfer, telling officials the family was "living in fear.
Irish police have arrested a man in his 20s and a woman in her 30s on suspicion of facilitating a criminal organisation after a petrol bomb was thrown into the English family home on Birch Avenue, Waterford, killing Kim and Philip English and their sons Callum, 12, and Jayden, nine, in the early hours of Tuesday. Philip's son from a previous marriage, John James English, told RTÉ his father's family had no involvement in drugs and were slaughtered over a €20,000 debt owed by someone else entirely. Two surviving children — Nadia, 14, and Elliot, six — remain critically ill at Children's Health Ireland Crumlin in Dublin. Gardaí fear a Traveller gang leader ordered the attack and say the two suspects can be held for up to seven days without charge.
The English home had already been petrol-bombed just three weeks before the fatal attack, and Philip's ex-wife Anne was also forced from her home in a separate petrol bombing.
John James English asked: 'Twenty grand worth of a debt — is that worth nearly five lives?'
The joint funerals of all four victims are due at Sacred Heart Church in Waterford on Monday.
