GARDAÍ ARE HUNTING a three-man gang who terrorised and robbed a pensioner in her home last night.
The gang entered the elderly woman’s house in Galbally, Co Limerick, around 11pm last night.
Gardaí have sent out a text alert to surrounding communities warning them of the incident and to be vigilant of any suspicious activity.
One of the three men was masked, gardaí said.
They demanded cash however it’s unclear how much they got away with.
“They held her in the house until they left,” said a Garda source.
“The victim was not hurt,” they added.
Gardai at Bruff are investigating, and have appealed for information.
The burglary follows another robbery of an elderly woman in the west of the county, in which a gang masquerading as workmen stole hundreds of euro from their victim.
The woman in her 80s was so terrified the gang would return to her house that she didn’t alert the Gardaí for a number of days.
“They left with the money for the job, and they took another amount of cash from the house,” a source said.
The woman did not want to be identified out of fear the gang would return to her home.
They are too afraid to be identified. They didn’t even want to report it to the garda they were so in fear.
Need for policing
Former detective garda Sean Lynch, who was part of the force in Limerick which toppled the city’s main criminal gangs, has called for the reopening of rural garda stations to help tackle burglaries.
“We need to put policing back into rural Ireland… There is huge neglect in the Garda presence in rural parts,” he added.
Al Fitzgerald (39), who runs his own construction company in Knocklong, Co Limerick, said he had been robbed several times but he has stopped reporting the crimes to gardaí.
“I’m a victim of crime but I’m not bothering to report it now,” he said.
Recently, at a house I am refurbishing, all the windows were broken and the roof slates were stolen. I didn’t report it because of the lack of garda resources.
Hitting out at cutbacks to An Garda Siochana, he said:
It’s not the garda’s fault; they just don’t have the manpower.
The security of the State should never have been compromised during the recession, and you don’t have to be up on the plinth of Leinster House to know that.
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