GARDAÍ WERE last night searching for a gang of armed raiders who opened fire with a handgun as they robbed money from a cash delivery van in a busy shopping centre.
Nobody was injured in the attack but at least two shots were fired as the gang tried to intimidate the crew of the van into surrendering money carried in the vehicle.
Garda sources said between €90,000 and €100,000 was taken in the robbery. The raiders escaped and remained at large last night.
The robbery took place as a G4S cash delivery van was taking money to load an ATM machine at the Hillcrest Shopping Centre in Lucan, Co Dublin, at noon yesterday.
As the crew of the vehicle were taking cash from the back of the van to bring into the shopping centre, the gang moved in.
The cash van was parked in the shopping centre car park at the time.
The armed raider pointed his weapon at one of the G4S workers and demanded he hand over the cash.
The raider fired two warning shots before bags containing up to €100,000 were grabbed by the other gang members and thrown in the getaway car. Gardaí believe four raiders were involved in the attack. They were all masked. It is believed only one of them was armed. The getaway car, a silver BMW, was last seen speeding from the scene in the direction of the nearby N4.
There were no arrests in the case last night and neither the getaway car nor the stolen money had been recovered.
Gardaí have drawn up a list of suspects of criminals known to have been involved in similar robberies in recent years. However, they are not yet working on any definite line of inquiry.
Yesterday's incident follows a sharp fall in the number of cash-in-transit robberies in the State in recent years. In 2004 there were 61 such incidents.
Gardaí believed at the time that many gangs were targeting cash-in-transit vans in an effort to steal seed capital for investment in the drugs trade. Some of the robberies netted the gangs responsible more than €2 million.
A number of specialist operations including Operation Delivery, and Operation Anvil, which focused on a number of known criminals, were established.
The number of such robberies fell by almost 20 in 2005 to 44 cases. The rate was reduced further to 31 cases in 2006 and fell again to 20 cases last year.
The investigation is based at Lucan Garda station: 01-6663700.
