24/09/2008

Two Held Over Cash Van Robbery

Gardaí have arrested two suspects in connection with an armed raid on a cash-in-transit van on Tuesday.

A member of the Group 4 Securicor staff was injured during the raid in which two shots were fired, and over €18,000 was stolen.

The incident took place outside the Ulster Bank branch near the Coachman's Inn pub on the Old Swords Road.

Two men disguised in Balaclavas, one carrying a hand gun and the other a sawn-off shot gun, threatened the staff before snatching a cash box containing logements from business premises, and escaping on a motorcycle driven by an accomplace.

The bike was later found abandoned at Stockhole lane. It had been fitted with false licence plates.

However, last night, local detectives arrested two suspects in the north of the city and brought them for questioning to Santry and Whitehall garda stations.

Gardaí believe the robberies are connected to gang activity in the north of the city, and may be connected to other robberies in the area.

Meanwhile, in the North, the PSNI are hunting an inept gang who used a bulldozer in a second failed ram-raid on an ATM cash machine.

Taking place early this morning, this was the second such incident in Co Tyrone in less than a fortnight.

The heavy digger was driven into the side of a Spar shop beside Kelly's Inn on the main road west toward Enniskillen, in Garvaghey, outside Ballygawley.

A PSNI spokeswoman later said neither the cash machine nor any money was taken.

Last week a similar digger was used to demolish a wall in nearby Carrickmore in an attempt to steal an ATM machine.

It later emerged that the safe containing the cash for the machine, which police thought had been stolen in that incident, was actually left buried under the rubble.

See: Digger Wrecks Shop In Second Failed ATM Ram-Raid

(DW)

Related Irish News Stories
Click here for the latest headlines.

11 December 2009
North's ATM Gang Strikes Again
Yet another automated teller machine (ATM) has been ripped from a in the North by thieves using a digger. Both Ulster Unionist MLA Danny Kinahan and the Alliance South Antrim MLA David Ford have condemned the theft, after a cash machine in Templepatrick was removed in the early hours of Friday morning.
18 January 2010
Border ATM Robbery Condemned
Gangsters have returned to their original area of operation with the thieves using a digger to steal a bank automated teller machine (ATM) from a bank along the poorly policed border area.
12 June 2009
Raiders Steal Cash Machine Out Of Wall
Raiders in Kilkenny have stolen an automatic telling machine they pulled out of a wall with a JCB. Gardaí are investigating the robbery in which a mechanical digger was used to remove a cash machine from a bank in Co Kilkenny. The incident took place at about 5.30am at a branch of Bank of Ireland in Graiguenamanagh.
24 July 2009
Another ATM Ripped From Wall By Robbers
Gardaí are searching for a gang following the 'excavation' and theft of an ATM in Co Wexford early this morning. The filling station facility was attacked with a mechanical digger which was used to remove the cash machine. It happened at the Mace filling station at Bellfield in Enniscorthy at around 5am.
05 June 2009
Thieves Steal ATM Machine Out Of Wall
A gang of thieves have stolen an ATM machine they ripped out of a wall in County Kildare. The thieves made off with an unknown sum of cash after taking the cash machine from the Mother Hubbard's restaurant in Moyvalley, Co Kildare at about 2am.