Alert passerby foils house burglars

Date Published: 25-May-2011

AN alert passerby helped foil a house raid in the Abbeyknockmoy area this week as three men in a van were on the verge of making off with several hundred euro worth of goods.

The three man gang had seized items for scrap and other goods from the house at Abbey Road, less than a mile from Abbeyknockmoy village on the main N63 road, shortly after 2pm on Tuesday last. The house was vacant when the gang called.

However the owner of the house – along with some friends and relatives – arrived at the scene within a matter of minutes after having received a call from another neighbour who had passed by a short time earlier and noticed the strange van ‘pulled in’.

Two vehicles were then parked at roadside exits from the property preventing the van from driving off, and shortly after, a number of Garda squad cars, as well as the armed Garda Regional Support Unit, arrived at the scene.

They surrounded the gang and arrested them on the spot without a struggle – a variety of goods were recovered from the van by the Gardai.

The three men – understood to be from the Newcastle West area of Limerick – were then taken to Tuam Garda Station where they were questioned for a number of hours under the Criminal Justice Act.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.