FOILED ARMED ROBBERY IN DUBLIN:A NUMBER of the men involved in yesterday's foiled cash robbery had been under close surveillance by Garda specialist units after they were implicated in a series of armed robberies in recent months in which over €8 million was stolen.
The surveillance operation, carried out by the National Surveillance Unit (NSU) and National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI), unearthed intelligence that led gardaí to Foxborough, Lucan, Dublin, yesterday.
The NBCI and the Organised Crime Unit (OCU) knew a gang of men from Dublin’s north inner city and Lucan were planning to stage an armed robbery.
The target was a G4S cash-in-transit van, carrying €1 million, that was delivering money to an ATM in a Centra shop on Foxborough Road in the Foxborough housing estate.
Members of the NBCI, OCU and Emergency Response Unit were waiting in unmarked cars in the streets around the Centra shop. When the G4S van arrived just before noon, two masked men got out of their car and approached the crew of the van.
They threatened the crew and discharged at least one shot from a sawn-off shotgun. At that point the armed gardaí moved in.
According to Garda sources, the gardaí at the scene shouted that they were armed and told the armed raider to drop his weapon.
When the armed man did not comply, one of the gardaí fired five shots, wounding both of the raiders, the sources said.
The wounded men were taken to Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown. One of them, 28-year-old Gareth Molloy from Sheriff Street, Dublin, died at the hospital.
The other man, a 26-year-old with an address near Sheriff Street, underwent surgery throughout yesterday. He is seriously ill.
When gardaí appeared at the scene and tackled the two men, three others in a second vehicle sped away. They were pursued into the adjacent Foxdene estate where their car was stopped and they were arrested.
A fourth man was arrested in a car a short distance away. The men, all in their 20s, were being questioned last night at Lucan and Ronanstown Garda stations.
They are being detained under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act. Two of them are cousins from a well-known criminal family in the north inner city.
One was arrested in February when €7.6 million was stolen during a robbery of the Bank of Ireland in College Green, Dublin. The other cousin is a suspect in at least three recent robberies of cash-in-transit vans in which substantial sums were stolen.
It was the Garda’s surveillance of the cousins that led officers to the scene of yesterday’s attempted raid. The other two men arrested are from the Foxdene estate and are regarded as minor criminal figures.
Local people at the scene of yesterday’s incident said they were shocked by the events in what they described as a very quiet estate.
A 26-year-old man who did not want to be named said he was in the Centra shop when the shooting took place outside. He said he heard shouting and then what he thought were gun shots.
“I just went in to get credit for my phone. I heard the bangs and I thought it was a gun. When I came out two of them [the raiders] were on the ground. I thought one of them looked dead but there were guards all over the place so it was hard to get a look at them.”
The man said the area was sealed off immediately the shooting occurred and that the injured men were given medical attention at the scene.
Another resident said she heard gardaí shouting to a raider to drop his weapon before she heard a burst of gunfire.
