Dead raider was holding gun to driver's throat
Garda team suspected raid after gang leader was spotted watching cash-in-transit vans
The 28-year-old armed robber shot dead by an undercover garda on Friday was holding a sawn-off shotgun to the throat of a security van driver and threatening to kill him before being called on to drop his weapon, it has been learned.
Gareth Molloy, 28, from Sheriff Street, Dublin, was shot dead after refusing to drop the shotgun when he was confronted by two members of the National Surveillance Unit.
The unit had been tracking the movements of another man, the 27-year-old leader of one of the most active armed robbery gangs in the country.
Molloy had fired a shot from the shotgun and was again threatening to kill the security man when he was confronted and shot dead.
It is understood that five shots were fired by one garda, after issuing a warning, three shots hitting Molloy and two shots hitting another gang member beside him. The other gang member is described as seriously ill but stable in James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown.
According to Garda sources the dead man was part of a highly active gang of robbers who have been responsible for several armed hold-ups in recent years, including the €7.6m heist from the Bank of Ireland at Dublin's College Green in February.
The leader of the gang is a man in his mid-20s from the north inner city who has been under close surveillance by gardai. He was observed last week following the movements of a G4S cash-in-transit van which regularly carries more than €1m and which visits the Centra shop on Foxborough Road in Lucan.
The gang leader bought a house in north County Dublin for €200,000 last year and has been under investigation by the Criminal Assets Bureau.
Senior gardai said the gang had been responsible for a series of armed robberies in the past two years. During these incidents security van drivers and assistants had been threatened at gunpoint and, in once case in Clontarf last year, shot in the leg.
Three men were still being questioned last night under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act. The three, all from north inner Dublin, were arrested when gardai stopped a car close to the scene of the attempted armed robbery.
Two of them are cousins from a well-known north Dub lin criminal family.
The gang leader was shot and injured in north Dublin last year. He has been involved in a vicious feud in the north inner city in which five criminals have been killed, and is suspected of carrying out at least two murders.
The gang is directed by a former senior Provisional IRA man in Dublin who was a close associate of Christy Griffin, the north inner city Dublin criminal now serving life imprisonment for the rape and sexual assault of his ex-partner's daughter over a prolonged period.
The same gang leaders have been responsible for a considerable number of armed robberies over the past decade. Two other members of the gang, Eric Hopkins and Colm Griffin, were shot dead while holding up staff at the post office at Lusk, County Dublin, in May 2005. Griffin was pointing an automatic pistol at a garda and refused to drop the weapon despite a warning.
The shooting dead of Molloy and injuring of his associate will now be the subject of an investigation by the Garda Ombudsman Commission, which previously ran into legal difficulties when it unsuccessfully attempted to stop the inquest into the deaths of Hopkins and Griffin in October 2007.
The ombudsman investigators will interview all the gardai involved in the confrontation in Lucan. In the case of Hopkins and Griffin, the ombudsman's senior official, Conor Brady, asked Dublin Coroner, Dr Brian Farrell to stop the inquest after having received a complaint from the families of the two deceased. At the time the ombudsman's office had only been in operation for a year and was inundated with work.
In the event the coroner refused the application to have the inquest suspended and went ahead with the case.
The jury delivers a "narrative verdict" simply stating that Hopkins and Griffin had been shot dead by members of the Garda's Emergency Response Unit.
- JIM CUSACK
