Two men who raided a Kildare supermarket in the middle of the night and stole a safe containing nearly €30,000 have been sentenced to three years by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Judge Yvonne Murphy said two members of the public alerted gardaí to what she said was a "well-planned and executed" offence and this allowed items to be recovered.
Anthony Smith (21), Huntstown Wood, Huntstown, and Jason O'Connor (27), Whitechapel Avenue, Clonsilla, pleaded guilty to burglary and criminal damage of Cope/Londis supermarket in Castledermot and handling a stolen BMW in St Margaret's, Co Dublin, on February 16th, 2005.
Judge Murphy heard that most of the stolen property was recovered. Damage valued at €5,059 had been done to the supermarket and the safe cost more than €2,000 to replace.
She suspended the final 12 months of Smith's sentence as he had three previous convictions for road traffic offences compared to O'Connor's "lengthy" list of 27 previous convictions for crimes including larceny, burglary, possession of knives and road traffic offences.
Det Garda Peter McGlinchy told Mary Rose Gearty, prosecuting, that raiders cut alarm cables and broke open the doors to various offices in the supermarket.
They found a safe containing €29,786 bolted to the floor of a strong room and used a hydraulic car jack to remove it.
They also stole a large quantity of cigarettes and boxes of ammunition.
Det Garda McGlinchy said the men hot-wired a forklift truck and loaded their haul into a supermarket pick up truck which they drove through a locked gate to escape.
At about 6.45am, a member of the public who had noticed the truck being driven at the gate contacted gardaí.
Another member of the public, who spotted three men in St Margaret's at about 10am taking a saw and a sledgehammer to a safe, contacted Swords Garda station. O'Connor and Smith were arrested at the scene but the third man got away.