Gardaí arrest suspect who allegedly returned to raid same post office one week on

Gardaí have arrested a 49-year-old man for questioning after he allegedly attempted to rob a post office exactly a week after he was alleged to have held up staff at the same location and made off with a substantial sum of cash.

The masked assailant entered the post office on the South Douglas Road in Cork City as staff were preparing to close for lunch, grabbed a woman customer and threatened her at knifepoint.

But he released the woman and fled empty-handed when staff managed to press a panic button and gardaí on patrol around Cork City responded quickly to the alarm being raised.

Two senior detectives from Anglesea Street Garda station were among those to respond, spotting a distinctively coloured car which investigators had linked to a similar robbery on Wednesday.

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The man had pulled into Kevin O’Leary’s Centra Garage on the South Douglas Road just east of the post office and the two senior officers detained him until colleagues arrived and he was arrested.

The man, who is from the Mahon area of Cork City, was arrested for questioning about the two raids on the South Douglas Road Post Office and a third raid on Ballintemple Post Office on Wednesday.

Gardaí believe the same raider was behind all three raids as his modus operandi was exactly the same in each case, entering the post office wearing a Covid face mask and dark clothing and hat.

The raider then waited until a customer went right up to the post-office counter before grabbing the customer and putting a knife to their throat and demanding €15,000 from post-office staff.

The assailant failed to get the amount he demanded but he did get what was described as “a substantial sum” in the first South Douglas Road raid which happened at midday on Friday, November 11th.

He got a smaller amount in the raid at Ballintemple which happened around midday on November 16th and he failed to get any money in today’s raid on the South Douglas Road Post Office.

The man has been taken to the Bridewell Garda station for questioning and he is being detained there under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act which allows gardaí to hold suspects for up to 24 hours.

Gardaí have also seized the man’s car and it has been sent for forensic examination by Garda technical experts, as was a hat which the suspect dropped when fleeing after the Ballintemple raid.

According to garda sources, the arrested man was not known to them, but they have begun tracing his recent movements to see if other similar robberies had taken place elsewhere in the country over the period.