An armed gang ram their way into a Dublin branch of Allied Irish Bank making off with night safe deposits.
At approximately 9:40 am a blue Cortina car was driven into the steel security doors at the Allied Irish Banks branch in Mary Street, just as it was opening and staff were counting money deposited in the night safe.
There were reportedly five men involved in the raid. They escaped with bags containing up to £100,000. During the raid, one senior bank official was hit on the head. He was treated for injuries in Jervis Street Hospital and later discharged.
A security guard from a nearby premises describes how the gang smashed the car into the bank and made off with the cash. Another eyewitness saw a man with a gun and other gang members wheeling trollies with bags of cash to their getaway van, a yellow Toyota. She wrote the registration number of the van on her hand and reported this to the Gardaí.
Gardaí Con O'Halloran and John Keane, from Pearse Street Station, had been driving a patrol car in the Capel Street area when they were alerted to follow the getaway van as it sped from the robbery scene. The fleeing gang fired at them. The Toyota van was abandoned on Primrose Avenue near Phibsborough.
The robbers also had to abandon an awaiting black car. Running across an open space
They dropped many of the night safe wallets.
The radiers hijacked a blue Toyota van in the North Circular Road area. This got stuck in an alley near Rathdown Road. An eyewitness saw three or four armed raiders abandon the van.
They just ran up the lane and jumped over the wall.
Reduced to four men, the raiders ran across the Christian Brothers residence attached to the school in North Brunswick Street. The gang left behind five guns including a Thompson submachine gun and a live Russian hand grenade.
Most if not all of the money had been dropped along the way.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 9 February 1981. The reporter is Jim Fahy.
