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Newry man Mark Pearce is well known to many around the city, having been a photographer for the Newry Reporter for years and now running his own popular Newry Uns brand on social media and he can be seen cycling round the city with his trusty dog Max. At the weekend his house at Damolly was attacked by a local teenager who broke two front windows and glass in the door. It's the annoyance that hurts the most though.
Mark explains how he was awoke around 12.30am in the early hours of Monday morning, 5 August, to the noise of breaking glass "Just after midnight I was in bed, the first thing I heard was a pop, it didn't sound like a window being smashed but then I heard the noise of glass falling, a window being smashed so I jumped up, stuck on my sandals, ran down the stairs, lost the sandal on the way down the stairs, just as the front door window was being smashed." When he looked out he saw one person halfway across the green in front of the house an "angry teenager" as he describes.
A group of between three and ten young people have been involved in making his life a misery for months. They have fired stones and fireworks at him, tried to kick him, robbed his bicycle and have blasted him with a torrent of verbal abuse. The same people it seems have tortured many residents in the area.
He's been called a paedophile, gay, ugly f* c* and worse. He believes his appearance is why he is picked on. "To them I am different, they have had poor parenting. I meet a lot of people in the town and 99% of them are all lovely people. They all have their quirks but they're not bad people. These ones take pleasure in berating and down-talking and whenever they go home and they're challenged or they're told that they're doing things wrong, the parents aren't concerned. They're laughing it off."
On Sunday evening before the latest incident he had been down at his local shop at 8pm with Max. As he walked down, a guy who has been giving him verbal abuse and personal abuse since last Halloween came across the road on his own shouting insults at him. Mark shouted back at him and the guy said "we'll smash your f*** windows"
"People say you shouldn't say nothing to them. And I mean not to say nothing but I'll not be spoke to like that by anybody." said Mark.
He believes that even though there are cameras everywhere in the estate nobody will give the footage to the police because they're afraid that if they say anything, next thing, the trouble will be directed at them. As a result there is a group of teenagers terrorising an entire community.
He has contacted the police on several occasions but it seems their hands are tied unless as he puts it "they give you a business card with their name and address on it". On one occasion he said "they told me to lock my doors, turn my lights out and don't look out the window - So sit in your house and be scared stupid."
Mark knows who the kids were "I see them on the street and because nothing happened them they felt, sure we can do what we f**** want here, nobody's going to challenge us. We can get away with this and to some degree they have."
He's certainly not moving out of his house "for a 16 year old" though but on Wednesday he met them while out cycling and they threatened to burn his house. "I was threatened and told I was going to have my house burnt, as I cycled past. They laughed at me. 'What about your windie's We're going to burn your f**** house next', screaming profanities and I had to cycle on. Who should have to do that in their own city?"
