GARDAÍ ARE investigating the second attempted armed robbery this week involving hostage-taking after a gang attempted to rob a post office by taking four hostages and then attacked an unarmed garda who tackled them.
The incident unfolded over a nine-hour period in Co Roscommon, only coming to an end at 8am yesterday when an unarmed Garda patrol responded to a call reporting suspicious activity, effectively foiling the robbery gang.
At about 11pm on Wednesday, a gang of four armed and masked men forced their way into a house adjoining the post office in Cloonfad, Co Roscommon.
The gang tied up the sole occupant of the property, Pádraig McCormick, who is retired from his former job as postmaster at the post office.
When the gang realised their hostage could not give them access to the post office, they demanded he tell them who had taken over from him.
The gang then left the house with their hostage and drove to the home of current postmistress Geraldine Finnegan in nearby Curragh. They broke into the house and took Ms Finnegan and her elderly parents with whom she lives hostage.
The gang, armed with shovels and iron bars, searched the house for money and eventually found about €2,500. Sources said the Finnegan home was “turned upside down” by the gang.
In the early hours of yesterday morning, the four hostages were driven from Curragh back to Cloonfad, where the gang gained access to the post office and waited for several hours for the time lock to open the safe.
However, a member of the Finnegan family called to the family home in Curragh and, seeing the house ransacked and nobody home, contacted the Garda.
An unarmed garda then went to the post office in Cloonfad in an effort to locate the Finnegans and on his arrival disturbed the robbery.
He tackled the gang, who attacked him. The gang then fled without accessing the money and drove off in a green Volkswagen hatchback car with an 06-Mayo registration. The four hostages were said to be traumatised but they were not physically injured.
The robbery follows a similar attack on Tuesday in which the family of a senior An Post official were taken hostage in their Kildare home by a gang who demanded the official take €100,000 from the GPO in Dublin and give it to the gang to secure his wife’s release.
The gang never contacted the official by phone as arranged to tell him where to leave the money and they abandoned his wife, handcuffed to a wheelie bin in a derelict shed in north Co Dublin.
She eventually freed herself and raised the alarm.
Gardaí investigating the Roscommon attempted robbery have appealed for anyone who was in the Cloonfad and Williamstown areas on Wednesday night and may have seen anything suspicious to contact them at Castlerea Garda station on 094-962 1630.