TWO MEN have been sentenced to six years in jail for their parts in a failed attempt to steal an ATM containing €234,000 from a bank in Co Kerry.
The men used an excavator to rip the machine and cash from the partly demolished front wall of the bank on Main Street, Castleisland. They had stolen the excavator, which is worth €100,000.
However, an otherwise meticulously planned operation failed when the raiders found the bucket of the excavator was too small to lift the ATM on to the back of a pick-up truck and they had to abandon the early morning raid.
The raid took place at 5am on November 13th last year. The raiders had conducted a practice run weeks in advance.
Mechanic Thomas Wilson (30), Banbridge, Co Down, and construction worker Christopher Murney (25), Mayobridge, Co Down, pleaded guilty to the theft of an ATM, criminal damage to the front wall of the bank, criminal damage of an excavator and arson of an excavator.
The men were forced to flee the scene but were spotted by gardaí in a pick-up truck 30 minutes later, still wearing balaclavas.
A high-speed chase ensued and the truck eventually crashed in a farmyard. The culprits then tried to escape on foot and were eventually apprehended by two gardaí, who used pepper spray and batons to subdue them.
At Limerick Circuit Court yesterday, Judge Carroll Moran commended the gardaí for their bravery in effecting the arrest of the the accused men.
The judge acknowledged that Wilson and Murney were not behind the sophisticated planning of the raid and were “foot soldiers who were to get a small share of the proceeds”.
He said, in mitigation, that the men had no previous convictions and did not have a criminal profile. He said they came from respectable families and that financial pressure had induced them to carry out the crime.
The judge described the organisers as sinister people who put the men under pressure to carry out the offence.
He said the two accused had continued to come under pressure after their arrests, and Wilson’s mother’s car had been burned out outside their home.
Judge Moran imposed a six-year sentence on both men, which he backdated to include the time they had already served in prison while awaiting sentence.
The judge recommended that they serve their sentences in a prison nearer to their homes in Co Down.