Alanna Quinn Idris has said she is still filled with anger at the people who brutally assaulted her nearly two years ago – but she is refusing to let it ruin the rest of her life.

Yesterday, a 19-year-old man became the second person to be jailed over the attack in Ballyfermot two days before New Years Eve 2021.

Josh Cummins of Raheen Drive in Ballyfermot was handed a three-year sentence for his part in the attack.

Alanna suffered catastrophic injuries during the attack, including the loss of sight in one of her eyes after she was struck with the saddle of an E-scooter.

In March, another young man was jailed for four-and-a-half years for his role in the attack.

Another is still before the courts, while a fourth person, believed to be the one who hit Alanna with the saddle, has yet to be identified.

Alanna Quinn Idris

On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, Alanna said she got little satisfaction from seeing Cummins locked up yesterday.

“He deserves, obviously, to be locked up and I do have that bit of satisfaction that he knows now that there are consequences for what you've done to me,” she said.

“It's moreso difficult because the person who did directly cause the damage to my eye hasn't been named or anything.

“So, knowing that the people who have been locked up, they're locked up, but they know who that was, so it's just a whole head-wreck to be honest.”

Attack

Alanna described what it was like the night she was attacked.

She said the four attackers came from two opposite directions and when she tried to protect her ex-partner from one of them, he punched her in the face.

The last thing she remembers before losing consciousness is the gang attacking her then-partner.

“I just remember waking up with all these people around me,” she said.

“I remember one of my friends screaming in my ear - because we were right outside her house -screaming for me to unlock my phone so she could get my mam.

“I just remember sitting there screaming, ‘My face, my face, my face’ because obviously there was blood everywhere, I was vomiting everywhere and I was in and out of consciousness.

“Across from me then I could see my ex and he was covered in blood, like blood running down from his head because they had split his head open.

“I was just crying for him and I was just in hysterics really.”

Alanna suffered a fractured eye socket, a detached retina and a “completely ruptured eyeball” during the attack.

She also had cracks in her sinuses, a fractured cheekbone, a broken tooth and damage to her hip.

She said doctors in the hospital seemed scared to tell her how bad the injury to her eye was.

“I remember, I was left alone in the room and I was getting checked by one of the doctors and she went to go do something so I got up and I looked in the mirror,” she said.

“I was so swollen that I had to open my eyelid with my hand and I remember opening it and it was just … it wasn't an eye, it was just carnage.

“So that's then when I realised; I broke down to my mam and that's when I realised that I wasn't going to be fixed.”

She said the attack has also sent her mental health struggles “off on a whole different course”.

Hurt

Alanna said she is filled with anger at the people who attacked her – but she is determined to ensure the attack does not ruin the rest of her life.

“I do have a lot of emotion behind this and I do kind of fear that people are going to think,  ‘Oh, it doesn't really hurt her that much’ and everything,” she said.

“I've had comments on my social media and stuff with people saying, ‘How can she talk so normally about it and be so positive but then go to court and cry and read an impact statement?’

“I'm like, you do understand that this is something that, it has emotionally affected me, of course, it's like, I was almost killed. You know, this is something that could have ruined my life, but at the same time, I can't let that ruin the rest of my life.

“I still have the rest of my life to live and, you know, as a mature person, I feel like everybody should be able to speak about anything just with the facts of it and not make it emotional.”