Dublin's Burning
Head shops have been the focus for a lot of unwanted publicity recently as the media cranked up the sensationalist coverage. And then the arsonists went into action, burning two premises to the ground within a week.
Stuart Clark, 03 Mar 2010
Vigilantism, or something even more sinister, returned to the streets of Dublin last week when two head shops were the victims of arson attacks.
The first to be targeted on February 12 was Nirvana in Capel Street. Self-styled “purveyors of fun stuff since 1993” and one of a chain of nine shops operating in Ireland and the UK, the shop went down in a fearsome blaze that closed the street, just north of the Liffey, for two days. Nirvana have been criticised in the past – not least by other head shop owners – for their late night selling of legal highs, through hatches, in both their Capel Street and South William Street outlets. Well, they won’t be doing it in Capel Street for a long time to come.
“Somebody has taken the law into their own hands as a result of the disgusting media coverage of the past month or so,” Nirvana owner Jim Bellamy told RTÉ radio as he surveyed the damage. “We’ve been tried by the media and found guilty and this is the sentence.”
Bellamy has since declined to give further interviews – something, which may be linked to Dublin Fire Brigade’s reported discovery in the debris of around €475,000 in cash.
While forensic tests to establish the cause of the blaze have yet to be completed, a Fire Brigade source tells Hot Press, “It was almost certainly started by an accelerant.”
Or to put it in more familiar terms: it was almost certainly a torch job.
If that remains to be 100% confirmed, there was absolutely no doubt about what started the fire, five days later, in the Happy Hippy Store on North Frederick Street. Shortly after 9pm, two masked men doused the front of the shop with petrol and even though it was obvious that members of staff were still on the premises, set fire to it. No lives were lost – but they might have been, with the staff having to make their escape through the flames.
GARDA VISIT
Alarms bells had started to ring three weeks earlier when, as reported by Eamonn McCann in the last issue of Hot Press, a group identifying themselves as Republican Action Against Drugs burst into Derry’s Red Star head shop, and shot the owner Ray Cole three times, seriously injuring him. The group had earlier told the Derry Journal newspaper that “some of our members have been members of the IRA, some have not.”
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