A HOMELESS COUPLE are 'lucky to be alive' after reportedly having their tents set ablaze by a gang of thugs in a park in Dublin on Sunday night.
Tony Walsh, founder of the Feed Our Homeless charity, stressed that the man “had to drag his partner out” from the flames.
According to the Irish Mirror, the incident took place in Phoenix Park where the couple had allegedly been pitching their tents for a few weeks.
"A gang of six people torched and burnt down a tent in the Phoenix Park," Walsh said in a statement.
"Unfortunately there was a couple sleeping in the tent where the partner had to drag his partner out of the tent and this couple is very lucky to be alive."
Walsh added that another incident of tent-torching had occurred, this time in Wolfe Tone Park on Tuesday night, where two more tents were burned by a gang.
"Luckily enough in this incident nobody had being sleeping in the tent [at the time]," he said.
According to Walsh, these men had been carrying fire extinguishers with them, and sprayed a homeless man while he was asleep in his tent, before verbally threatening him.
"These incidents where a gang of male people are going around burning down tents while homeless people are asleep in them is very serious. It’s lucky for these homeless people nobody was seriously injured.
"This is the fourth or fifth serious incidents that has happened in Wolfe Tone Park.
"As I said before there is no place in our community for this type of behaviour where peoples lives are being seriously put in danger.
"Homeless people who are sleeping rough in Wolfe Tone Park day or night are not safe."
