A woman who was attacked in her home in the Waterside area of Derry early yesterday said she thought she was going to be raped.
Mrs Sharon Houston had a knife put to her face and a bootlace tightened around her neck by two masked men who forced their way into her Mimosa Court home at 2 a.m. "They kept tightening the bootlace around my neck and I started to get dizzy and I felt as if I was just floating. One of them laughed at me and said he liked my pyjamas. I thought I was going to be raped," she said.
She was woken by a man shouting out her name. "My husband Kevin was on night duty. The man asked for the keys of the shop where I work and I thought it was my boss and that something had happened at the shop.
"As I opened the door one of them punched me in the face and threw me to the floor. They then pulled me into the living room and threw me down on the sofa. They stabbed the sofa beside me and yelled at me for the shop keys but I didn't have the keys.
"They then put a sweater around my head and tightened a bootlace around my neck screaming for the keys. One of them nicked me on the face with the knife while the other was upstairs ransacking the rooms. Thank God the four children slept through it.
"It's bad enough breaking into my home but there was no need to beat me, choke me, threaten me and make me feel dirty in my own home. When the police arrived the children woke up and they were crying. We all had to sleep in the one bed because they were too scared to go back to their own beds," Mrs Houston said.
Detectives said Mrs Houston suffered a horrific ordeal. "What these two thugs put this woman through in her own home is beyond belief and we would appeal for anyone with information about the attack to contact us immediately," an RUC spokesman said. The attack was condemned by the Sinn Fein deputy Mayor of Derry, Cllr Lynn Fleming and by Mr Philip Kelly, an SDLP councillor.