Man and woman charged after Waterford attack that killed four members of family

A man and woman have been charged over an arson attack in Waterford that killed four members of the same family.

Philip and Kim English and their sons Callum, 12, and Jayden, nine, died in the attack on their home on Tuesday.

Two other children remain in critical condition in hospital.

A man in his 20s and a woman in her 30s were arrested on Thursday and Gardaí said they have now been charged.

Several searches have been carried out and a number of items have been seized in the investigation, Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly said on Friday.

He said that he expects more arrests in the murder investigation and that An Garda Síochána has ‘given every resource’ to investigating the deaths.

The funerals of the four victims will take place in Waterford on Monday.

Their local parish police said the city is ‘still in shock’ after the deaths.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme on Friday, Fr Gerry Chestnutt said that the community is still trying to make sense of Tuesday’s fire.

‘There is just a deep, deep sense of sadness around here, around our entire city,’ he said.

‘People are still in shock. They’re heartbroken. They’re devastated, and they can’t understand how this will happen and why this will happen.

‘What happened should never have happened, and people are entitled to feel angry because it’s a natural reaction when something that is so horrendous takes place to a family that were absolutely completely innocent and loved in the area in which they lived.’

Gardaí said the arrested man and woman were being held on suspicion of facilitating a criminal organisation.

The post-mortem examinations on Mr and Mrs English and their sons have been completed, but the results are not being released for ‘operational reasons’.

Mr English’s son claimed earlier this week his family were murdered because of someone else’s 20,000-euro drug debt.

John James English said the family had been targeted for some time but were not involved in drugs and were ‘innocent’.

He told RTÉ News: ‘It’s a family, you know. Twenty grand worth of a debt, is that worth nearly five lives?’

Multiple properties have been searched and a number of electronic devices and vehicles seized as part of an ‘intense’ Garda investigation.

Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane, who knows the family, said people in Waterford were devastated by their deaths.

Speaking in the Dáil during Leaders’ Questions on Thursday, Mr Cullinane said: ‘This murderous attack showed utter contempt for human life, and anyone who planned, ordered, or carried out this attack must face the full force of the law.

‘Drug-related intimidation must also be confronted head on. Other families are looking out their front doors and wondering, could their children be next?

‘No family should have to put their children to bed wondering whether someone will set fire to their home before morning, and yet drug gangs and organised criminals are inflicting precisely that terror on families.

‘They threaten children. They assault people. They burn homes, they murder people, and they pursue parents, friends, and even neighbours for money.’

He called on the Government to ensure that Waterford has the Garda resources needed for the murder investigation, including the support of the Organised Crime Unit and the Criminal Assets Bureau.

Minister for Defence Helen McEntee said the attack was ‘violent criminality’ and that drug debt collection was an ‘absolute scourge’ on society.

‘For those who do not feel that they can go to the Garda, I think this is part of some of the problem for people,’ she said.

‘They don’t feel that they can go to the gardaí, that there are other routes, but that we do need to encourage people to go directly to the gardaí because we do have within An Garda Síochána a dedicated unit, a dedicated anti-drug strategy through Operation Tara, that looks at and deals with quite a number of things.’

Ms McEntee said she would ‘engage’ with the Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, on whether more could be done to tackle the issue.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

Add Metro as a Preferred Source on Google

Add as preferred source