The following is a true account of an event that occurred in November 1997 in Killarney County Kerry. Names may have been changed 🤔 as it was a long time ago.

I was nearly 18 at the time and had been backpacking 🎒 around Europe as a solo traveller. 

I had made some so called friends who I would often hangout with. They were not the most law abiding of friends in fact they were the complete opposite.

John was a well built large Irish man who did not work. Pete was a young Irish pot head who did not work either. 

We were hanging out when a group of men from Dublin were looking to score some weed. At the time I had nothing to do with ilegal things like that and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

John said "I can sort you out for what ever you need" he was well connected 😀. For some stupid reason John wanted me to tag along proberly as I was very streetwise and well travelled. But, more likely as a scapegoat in case things went wrong. We arranged to meet later that night around 2300 to complete the transaction. 

As the guarda took a very dim view on those sorts of things we all went down a dark unlit street. Their were the 5 men from Dublin, John, Pete and I. 

John asked for the money first, for some reason he passed it to me to hold. I put it in my pocket. John then passed them the bag of weed. Well it was actually dry leafs 🍃 but, I did not know that at the time. 

It then took a turn for the worse the moment they realised it was not what they had intended to be. The smallest of the group shouted "what the f#$k is this" while he got a small knife 🔪 out of his pocket. There was no possibility of us being able to defend ourselves against the group. John and Pete made a run for it. John was later caught by the group. I realised that I had to act fast and took a run for it. I run as fast as I could still with the money in my pocket. I went back to the hostel shacking like mad.

A few days later I found out that they had caught John but, luckily in a bizzy area. He gave them the money 💰 back and got a beating for it. John was then looking for me. I decided to leave the area. 

Had I known that John was going to intentially rip them off I would have had nothing to do with it.