A criminal gang that killed four innocent people plotted the petrol-bomb attack and stored the device at a house just ‘a stone’s throw’ from the murder scene, gardaí believe.
Detectives have arrested five people so far in relation to the deaths of Philip English, his wife Kim and two of their children, Callum and Jayden. Two of those arrested have been charged and have appeared in court on two occasions.
Philip and Kim’s other two children, Nadia, 14, and Elliot, six, remain in a critical condition in hospital.
On Tuesday, officers arrested a man in his 50s and two women in their 30s in relation to the attack.
While gardaí are confident they did not carry out the arson attack at the Birchwood estate just outside Waterford city, they believe it was orchestrated a very short distance from the English family home.
Officers had seized phones, laptops, tablets as well as other electronic media last week from several locations around Waterford which have been forensically searched.
Sources have described how the investigations have led gardaí to believe that the plan to attack the family home was organised from a nearby location.
‘It is the theory from gardaí that a woman’s home was used to both store and plan the petrol bomb attack. This is someone the English family knew well, and the homes were a stone’s throw from one another,’ one source said.
Two of those arrested are a brother and sister who belong to a crime family in the Waterford area. The other woman is an associate of that family. They are not the leaders of the gang but are considered “very close to the top bosses”,’ sources said last night.
The three were detained under gangland legislation which makes it a crime to knowingly participate in or contribute to the activities of a criminal organisation to enhance its ability to commit a serious offence.
Senior sources said that the latest Garda operations are part of a wider investigation into the activities of the gang, and it is hoped that these arrests will bring them closer to apprehending the ringleaders who ordered the murders.
Meanwhile, Nadia and Elliot are still clinging to life in Crumlin Children’s Hospital. Nadia has shown slight signs of improvement to her condition. However, Elliot has not.
The teen girl and younger boy both survived the sickening attack, which claimed the lives of Callum, 12, and nine-year-old Jayden, along with their parents Philip and Kim.
Philip’s sister Jackie English told Extra.ie at the weekend: ‘All I know is that [he] is still critical, and [she] is just more or less slowly making progress, but we still don’t know.’
Describing the attack made on the innocent family as an ‘absolute disgrace’, Ms English said that she was left ‘distraught’ by the loss. ‘I’m numb. I’m in shock. I’m lost for words right now.’
Ms English lives around the corner from her late brother’s home, and witnessed the aftermath of the attack.
‘I just got my door nearly kicked down, asking me to go up, [being told] my brother’s house was on fire by [Philip and] Kim’s neighbours.’
Uniformed gardaí are maintaining a presence at the hospital as the two children continue to receive treatment.
Philip’s son from a previous marriage, John James English, has also revealed that gangland figures in the city had terrorised his family for years over a €20,000 drug debt owed by someone known to the family.
Only three weeks before the fatal attack, the family car had been targeted with a petrol bomb. Nobody was injured in that incident. John James also revealed that the home of his mother Anne, Philip’s ex-wife, was previously targeted in another petrol-bomb attack.
Mr English continues to post on social media to ‘speak out’ for justice for his family. He has repeatedly described how his father, siblings and stepmother were in total fear for their lives before they were killed.
He said: ‘No family, no children, no person deserves what happened to them when they are innocent and didn’t do drugs or owe money. They were innocent. All of them.’
Addressing their killers, he added: ‘You put the fear into my poor family. They were scared. I’m so angry. I did warn them, as well as my own mother, when her house was done [petrol bombed] in May. I won’t stop. Trust me. I’m going to keep fighting for justice. People are telling me to stop posting online and that it’s a way of coping, but it’s not. It’s for awareness and justice.’
