Grandpa helps stop robbery in Ireland
The manager of a bookmakers in Ireland has said he is indebted to an 85-year old great grandfather who helped fight a robbery at the shop on Saturday evening by tackling one of the robbers.
Three men, armed with hammers and a sawn-off shotgun, fled empty handed from the bookmakers in County Cork, after the office manager and his customer resisted their attempts to rob the safe.
Business have returned to normal at the Bar One Racing office at Glanmire today after the shocking events of Saturday evening. Three robbers burst into the betting office just after 6.20pm on Saturday. One jumped the counter and threatened office manager Tim Murphy, while another pointed a shotgun at 85-year old Denis O’Connor and threatened him.
The bandits demanded the contents of the safe. Mr O’Connor grappled with one of them and managed to get him outside the counter before he fled. While being threatened with a hammer Mr Murphy tackled the second one before he fled. The attempted raid was over in a little more than half a minute.
Mr Murphy says he will be forever grateful for the intervention of Mr O’Connor. Gardaí are trawling CCTV footage for sightings of a black Volkswagen Passat used by the raiders, and are appealing for witnesses or people with dashcam footage to contact them. They say while the robbery was foiled their advice to people is to not intervene.
Mr O’Connor returned to his local betting office yesterday, but has declined requests for an interview. He is none the worse for his ordeal and spent this morning playing pitch and putt and this afternoon relaxing at home. He is not quite reveling in his new-found fame on the internet and is anxious for the publicity to blow over.
