Garotted Irish cyclist calls for children who laid booby trap to be caught

A young woman cyclist who was garotted by a rope laid as a booby trap by some children has urged the police to find out who committed the crime.

Monique Kelleher was riding home at 10pm last Sunday night in the dark, when she was heckled by a group of children on Mercer Street, Dublin.

She was chased by one, she told the Irish Independent, and cycled faster to get away with him. 

"I had been on a course that day and I had my laptop with me," she said.

"I heard one of them shouting, 'Stop her, stop her', and I didn't know whether they wanted to rob me or not. I felt I was getting away from them before I fell.

"'Get her to stop' was the last thing I heard, and the next thing I was on the ground. They scattered."

She didn't realise at first that there had been a clothes line fixed up at neck height, which had caught her on the throat. She also had some damage to her hand.

She said that as she lay in the road, one of the children she thought had been involved rode back to her on a bike and said: "Did you not hear them telling you to stop?"

She said: "I feel relieved that I am okay, but I don't want this to happen to anybody else – that's why I hope the gardai find these kids.

"They have to realise that it is totally irresponsible and could have been so much worse."

In a similar attack, a cyclist was left unconscious, and his bike stolen, after being brought down by a clothes line strung across the Bristol to Bath cycle path at wheel height last year.

In 2004, the Bristol Observer reported how a cyclist was left with lacerations on his neck as he rode his recumbent on the same path.