Gardai throughout north Cork and in the Limerick area are searching for a four-man gang which wrecked a Telecom Eireann exchange in Boherbue, near Mallow, Co Cork, early yesterday and then became involved in a Garda chase.
The gang attacked the exchange at about 2 a.m., taking out all 029 numbers in the area and affecting 500 families between Boherbue and Kiskeam. According to Telecom, it may take up to three days to restore the telephone lines.
The Garda theory is that the gang intended to cut telephone connections between important commercial interests in the area to enable them to carry out a series of robberies, probably targeted against banks and other commercial outlets. However, once the lines were cut, Garda alarms went off and a Garda car responded to the emergency.
It is understood that the stolen car driven by the gang then made off at speed and that it was followed by the squad car. At one point during the chase, the gang's car stopped and one man got out to throw a heavy wire-cutting instrument through the windscreen of the Garda car. The chase then continued, but once again the gang stopped and a crowbar was thrown through the windscreen of the Garda car. A woman garda was slightly injured, sustaining bruises and cuts. After the second incident on the road, the car smashed through a Garda checkpoint, as it headed towards Limerick. According to Mr Nick Quigley, manager of the Phone Watch Ireland Company, the attack against the Telecom installation did no damage to his customers, mostly elderly people, who use the company's service as an emergency back-up in case of raids against remote rural properties.
He said that even if telephone lines were cut to remote homesteads, there was an Eircell fallback facility that would mean that emergency services could be alerted almost immediately.
Mr Michael Moynihan, a local TD, said the raid amounted to an attack not only on the Telecom facility but against the entire community. Many elderly people in the area were using the Medi-Alert facility, which allowed them to call for medical assistance in the event of an emergency, and because of the action by a gang of thugs, they were now denied this facility.