A shop owner in Cavan has spoken of his terror after he and members of his family were subject to a Tiger-style kidnapping.
The incident happened in the early hours of Monday morning, when four masked men armed with handguns, entered his home in Crosserlough in Cavan.
Rodney Dolan, who owns a Centra shop in Ballyjamesduff, said he was asleep at home when he heard his alarm going off.
His father, brother and his brother’s fiancée were also in the house.
“I got up and I could hear strange voices on the landing. A man wearing a ski mask with a gun and a torch began threatening us.”
He said the men checked every room in the house but did not discover his elderly father who was asleep in one of the rooms.
The masked men demanded the alarm code and keys to his shop, and then tied their arms up with cable ties.
They took Mr Dolan’s jeep and drove the three of them to the site of a disused quarry on the outskirts of Ballyjamesduff town.
One of the men stood outside the jeep with a gun while the others robbed the shop several kilometres away.
“I couldn’t see where we were so I feared for our lives. I was scared that we were near a lake and that they would take the handbrake off and let us drown,” he said.
The men demanded codes for the shop’s ATM and safe and said if any of the information was incorrect, they would shoot them.
“We were in the jeep for a while so I wriggled to make noise to see if they gunman would react. When I realised he was gone, my brother’s girlfriend managed to open the door of the jeep with her toes,” he said.
The three of them managed to escape from the jeep at around 3.45am .
“We still had our hands tied behind our backs and were in our underwear so we kept running until we could find a house to get help. My brother rang the doorbell of a house with his nose and thankfully someone answered. He gave us clothes and rang 999 and the gardaí,” he said.
Mr Dolan said it was a terrible ordeal and believed he was targeted, and his home and business were being watched.
“I’m just tired but relieved at the moment. The guards say it will probably take a week for it to hit me,” he said.
Mr Dolan thanked locals in Ballyjamesduff for their support following the incident. “ I can’t thank the people around here enough for their support and help,” he said.
Gardaí have appealed for any information which may help in their investigations into the incident.