Four men may be linked to abduction attempt on boy

Gardaí investigating the attempted abduction of a 10-year-old boy from outside his Westmeath home on Saturday have said up to four men may have been involved in the incident.

When interviewed by gardaí on Saturday the boy at the centre of the abduction attempt, Garry Jessop, said two black men in a black Mercedes car tried to abduct him from outside his family home at Togher, around four miles from Tyrrellspass. When he was spoken to by gardaí late on Sunday, Garry said two white men were sitting in the front of the car as their accomplices tried to snatch him. He claims one of the men grabbed him but he managed to hit him in the face and wriggle free. He immediately ran to his parents' home nearby, on a rural boreen off the Tyrrellspass-Daingean road, where he raised the alarm.

Insp Denis Shiels, Mullingar, said when Garry raised the alarm his mother ran from the house onto the road and glimpsed a car cresting a bend a few hundred metres from the house. While the family got into their own car and followed in the direction of the black Mercedes they did not see it. "It is a very worrying incident. At the moment we are checking our records to see if anything like this has happened in the area before, or indeed anywhere else," Insp Shiels said.

Garry claims when he walked onto the boreen the black Mercedes car had just passed his aunt's house and reversed back towards him. The two men got out of the car and tried to abduct him. Gardaí are appealing for anybody who may have seen a black Mercedes, with tinted windows, in the area to come forward.