Seven held over kidnap and cash-in-transit robbery
Seven people are being questioned today over a €100,000 robbery in which a cash-in-transit worker’s terrified mother and young niece were held hostage.
The arrests were made after early morning searches of 18 properties in Dublin, Meath and Wexford as part of an investigation into last month’s tiger kidnapping in the capital.
An armed gang forced their way into the employee’s home in O’Connell Gardens, Irishtown, on January 4 and the family members were taken away.
The worker was ordered to go to the Bank of Ireland in O’Connell Street, get cash from a security van making a delivery and then dump the money in a white Renault van at the Skylon Hotel in Drumcondra.
The mother, in her late 60s, and nine-year-old niece were driven around in a stolen silver Toyota Verso.
They were later freed unharmed in Shankill, south Co Dublin, and the worker went to Bray garda station soon afterwards.
The five men and two women arrested, aged between 25 and 35, were taken to Donnybrook, Pearse Street, Harcourt Terrace, Kevin Street, Kilmainham, Crumlin and Irishtown garda stations.
They can be held for up to seven days under section 50 of the Criminal Justice Act.
The searches were carried out by gardaí from the Dublin South Central Division supported by members of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the Special Detective Unit and the Organised Crime Unit.
Following a string of kidnappings of bank officials late last year, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern met bank chiefs and raised concerns about the quantities of money stored in vulnerable branches.
Banks were also ordered to look into tightening rules on staff access to large sums of cash to further combat similar raids.
