THE wife of a Co Donegal man confronted a neighbour who shunned her pleas for help the day after she lost her two boys.
Nurse Glenda Moore, whose husband Damien is from Portnoo, lost a grip on their boys Connor, 4, and Brendan, 2, as Superstorm Sandy engulfed Staten Island, New York.
Mrs Moore tried in vain to get help from some neighbours but found them shutting their doors in her face.
Now it’s emerged grief-stricken Glenda returned to the scene where she lost her boys the next day and had to be restrained by police as she confronted one of those neighbours.
“I asked you to help me, you bastard!” Glenda Moore screamed at the man she claimed ignored her pleas as she tried desperately to get inside his home, a neighbour said.
George Calve, 63, another neighbour who wasn’t aware of her plight, said he sympathised with Mrs Moore’s reaction.
Police confirmed Mrs Moore banged on the doors of several neighbours on Father Capodanno Boulevard after floodwaters swept away her young children Brendan, 2, and Connor, 4, as the superstorm raged.
She had packed up her family into their car and was trying to get them to Brooklyn to seek shelter from the storm when her car stalled in the rising floodwaters.
The desperate mother was able to get her children out of the car, but they were swept away when a wave crashed into them.
The boys’ bodies were found a short distance away near the intersection of McLaughlin Street and Olympia Boulevard last Thursday morning after days of intensive searching.
As the search for the boys continued, Moore returned to the area in a police car and began shouting at the man who she said turned his back on her plight.
When officers approached the man, he told them that he thought he was being robbed, according to Calve.
“The guy said that somebody threw a flower pot through the window,” Calve said.
According those living along the road near where the bodies were found, the man also told them the next morning after the storm that he heard someone knocking on his back door and thought it was a burglar.
“The next morning he came out wrapped in a towel,” said Eugene Brener, 19. “He said somebody knocked at the door and he thought they were robbing him.
“He said, ‘I’m not going to open the door, I’m not crazy.’”
Another neighbor, Inna Butenico, said that the same man grabbed her by the hand and brought her to the back of his house.
“He brought me over and said someone tried to rob me — look what happened,” she said.
“He said somebody broke his back window on the night. He was very afraid somebody would take something.”
On Friday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that he had spoken to the boys’ father, who had been called into work during the storm.
“I did talk to him this morning and express to him as a parent my deepest sympathies,” Bloomberg said.
“You are praying for them you are praying for their kids, we will do anything we can to help them. The loss of a child is something no parent should ever go through.”
Connor and Brendan Moore are among the 22 people killed in the borough, the hardest hit, during the storm.
Their funeral Mass will take place this Friday in New York; their grandparents will attend a special Mass in Portnoo to remember them.
Damien was at work helping others when his children were lost.
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