A WITNESS has told a cash-in-transit robbery trial that a woman approached her after stepping out of a people-carrier and told her she had just been kidnapped.
Mary Ryan told Remy Farrell SC, prosecuting, that she pulled in behind the vehicle which had been parked outside her boyfriend’s mother’s house in a Shankill housing estate and saw a woman in a pink dressing gown in “a confused and frightened state”.
“She told me she had been kidnapped so I phoned the gardaí. She then told me there was still a child in the car. The child did not want to get out of the car because she was so frightened,” Ms Ryan told the jury.
Det Ciarán Murphy told Mr Farrell that he later found the woman and the child in a distressed state and still in their night clothes. He noted the registration of the Toyota parked outside the house and saw it had blackened windows.
He then arranged for the car to be preserved as a crime scene.
Stefan Saunders (34) of Hazelbury Park, Blanchardstown, has pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to robbing €134,000 from Reginald Shannon on January 4th, 2010, and to falsely imprisoning him, Angela Shannon and the child at O’Connell Gardens on Bath Avenue on the same date.
The trial continues in legal argument before Judge Patricia Ryan and is expected to resume before the jury on Tuesday.