When she looked out her bedroom window last week, Sheila Melly felt safe knowing she was living next to a police station in a Co Antrim village.
On Saturday night, that changed.
The 78-year-old widow was lying in bed reading when she heard an “unmerciful bang” outside her Dunmurry home.
She thought someone was trying to kick her door in.
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Terrified, she went into her livingroom where she saw “a big light shining” on her.
“All I heard was ‘this is the police, don’t open your door, don’t open your windows. Lie on the floor’,” said Melly.
“I thought there was a gunman about, as you would.”
The pensioner was among the residents evacuated from their homes following a car-bomb attack outside Dunmurry police station shortly before 11pm on Saturday evening.
“I heard the bomb and then there was total silence. I was in my bedroom, lying on the floor and afraid to move because no one had told me what to do. It was really scary,” said Melly, who lives alone.
Police patrols are being stepped up across Northern Ireland following the attack, which has been claimed by dissident republican paramilitary group, the New IRA.
On Tuesday, detectives arrested a 66-year-old man in the Dunmurry area in connection with the incident.
Forensic officers examined the area and Melly was not allowed to return home until Monday night.
She invited The Irish Times into her pristine apartment in the quiet housing development she moved into nine years ago with her late husband, Seamus.
It is a sunny Tuesday afternoon and she points to the view of Black Mountain.
“Only last week I was doing my cleaning, leaning on my bedroom window sill looking out, thinking ‘isn’t this lovely’. And aren’t I so lucky to be beside the police station’,” she said.
Melly grew up in Andersonstown in west Belfast during the Troubles and is worried the explosion may make people feel “wary” again.
“I feel these dissidents want to bring us back to the past again.
“We’re too long out of that now to go back. No one wants to go back. They were really awful days that we grew up in.”
A charred piece of ground outside the police station is the only reminder of the weekend blast.
The explosion took place a month after a police station was targeted by dissident republicans in Lurgan, Co Armagh.
A row of shops facing Dunmurry station was busy with the lunchtime rush on Tuesday.
Stacey McAleer (30) wheeled a buggy past the station towards her home.
She had just put her son to bed on Saturday evening when she heard the bomb go off.
“I thought a lorry had crashed into Tesco,” said McAleer who lives a street away from the station.
“One of my friends sent me a picture on Facebook and you see the big smoke cloud.
“My son is coming two next week and my daughter is four. I’m just thankful my kids weren’t up. I was up to high doh, I couldn’t sleep.”
McAleer is pregnant and moved into Dunmurry with her partner five years ago.
She grew up in west Belfast and loved “the quiet” of the village and the fact it was a “mixed area”.
“No one expected the bomb, especially when nothing like this has happened in so long,” she said.
“Even yesterday, someone closed their bin lid and I jumped. You almost have to psyche yourself down, any wee noise can set you off.
“Before, you felt safe because the police station was so close.
“My daughter was asking the next day why there was people in our street in ‘funny white suits’. The forensics were everywhere.
“But it wouldn’t put me off staying here ... No one wants this.”
[ Man (66) arrested under Terrorism Act over Dunmurry police station bombingOpens in new window ]
